


The Pass of Thermopylae Raid

by RKMacBride



Series: Rats and Foxes [2]
Category: The Rat Patrol
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Battlefield, Best Friends, Bilingual Character(s), Episode Style, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitals, Loyalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 16:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17369537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RKMacBride/pseuds/RKMacBride
Summary: The Rat Patrol is assigned to prevent the Germans of 3rd Panzer Reconnaisssance from reaching the town of Al-Jawari before the British can arrive to reinforce it.





	1. Prologue/A Cunning Plan

**Author's Note:**

> Supporting Cast:
> 
> Friedrich Arnheiter: played by Hardy Kruger (circa 1950)  
> Konrad Genscher: played by Manfred Lating
> 
> Note: You don't have to read German to understand (and, I hope, enjoy) the story--but just as the Rat Patrol series never employed subtitles to translate the German characters' speech, I don't translate either in most cases. However, I do my best to make the meaning of most German phrases or expressions clear from the context (if you want to translate individual words, the best online dictionary is LEO-Wörterbuch: https://dict.leo.org/german-english/).
> 
> “The Pass of Thermopylae Raid" was actually my first Rat Patrol story, published in 1992 in the multi-fandom genzine _Of Dreams and Schemes_, edited by Catherine Schlein. It was slightly revised for my anthology of stories, _Rats and Foxes_, in 1998. This is a major rewrite and expansion of the original plotline; however, the essential plot elements remain the same. 
> 
> A little historical context would probably be helpful here. Anyone who is familiar with the events of the North African campaign will be aware that the timeline of episodes in Rat Patrol is very much out of order. The original series producers elected to start the series at the time of the American presence in North Africa, after Operation Torch landed U.S. troops in Tunisia in November 1942. However, the producers and writers seem not to have realized 1) that the entire campaign at that point was nearly over, and ended only six months later, and 2) that the British Eighth Army and the Afrika Korps (DAK) had been fighting back and forth across Libya and the Western Desert region of Egypt since the spring of 1941. By late in first season, the producers seem to have figured this out and the internal dates of episodes shift to spring of 1942. There was no U.S. military presence in North Africa at this time; therefore, the Rats are volunteers serving in this theater of operations, and all their officers and command structure are British. This story takes place in October of 1941.

_“The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley.”_

_—Robert Burns_

_“A [starship] runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it—or him.”_

_—Spock of Vulcan_

 

Prologue: Shadows from the Past

          When Doctor Köhler arrived at the HQ tent, Dietrich stepped out and beckoned to the sentry who was standing outside. "See that we are not disturbed. _Ist das klar_?"

          " _Ja, mein Herr._ " Once the captain went back inside, Müller, the sentry, dutifully took up his position a couple of feet in front of the tent so that even he would not hear what was being said within.

          Dietrich then turned to the battalion doctor, brow furrowed and dark eyes perturbed.  “What about Stroh? Is his condition improving?” One of the artillery sergeants had been ill for some time.

          Martin Köhler sighed heavily and shook his head. “No. I’m sorry to say, there is nothing more to be done.”

          “Nothing?” the captain asked sharply. “He is dying, then?”

       “Hans, I don’t know. He may survive. But there has been permanent damage to his heart from the parasites. If he lives, he will never be fit enough to serve again with such a heart condition.” It was ever thus in North Africa, he reflected—disease was an even greater threat than the Eighth Army. “I have ordered that he be transported to the battalion hospital at El Agheila; they can care for him there better than we can here in the field hospital. What else did you want to consult me on, Hans?”

          “The letter I wrote you regarding Private Arnheiter?”

          “Yes. You said he shows signs of nervousness. In what circumstances ?”

          “It varies; I have observed no apparent pattern. But it has been noted by others as well as I.  Some of the men call him an _Angsthase_[1]; that won’t do.  I thought perhaps he may have some sort of shell shock or battle fatigue, but he has never been in combat, according to his records.”

          “It may stem from some earlier experience.” The doctor from Hannover frowned as well. "So that is why after I read your letter, I came here and borrowed him as my driver yesterday while visiting _Kompanie_ 2.” Dietrich nodded, and the doctor continued. “I wanted to observe him without your presence. I can assure you, he's quite sane—as sane as you or I. And I observed nothing out of the ordinary in his actions or his demeanor.  He is, in fact, quite a good-natured and amiable fellow. But that does not rule out the possibility of some degree of persistent anxiety."

          "What causes this?"

          "There can be many causes. A severe shock or traumatic event, for example, such as a natural disaster. However..." Köhler hesitated before continuing. "It could also be what we call a conditioned response."

          The captain looked even less pleased than he had before. "Explain that, please."

          "Oh, it's quite simple, Hans. All thinking creatures—rats, dogs, horses, men—can be taught to fear something. Anything.” The doctor spoke lightly, but his voice carried an edge of bitterness. "I have seen a film of how it is done. An American scientist named Skinner developed the method a number of years ago. One places a rat—just an ordinary rat—in a cage with a metal floor wired for electricity. After it has grown accustomed to being in the cage, one shows the rat a photograph of a butterfly, or a flower, or something equally harmless, and simultaneously applies a painful electric shock to the floor of the cage. The unfortunate animal cannot escape, nor can it avoid the shock to its feet by climbing on something because there is nothing else in the cage. The procedure is repeated at random intervals, and before long the rat becomes highly agitated and fearful merely at the sight of the picture. And then it becomes constantly nervous because it has no way to predict or avoid the next occurrence of the foot shock." He continued. "Over time, these unhappy creatures begin to do such things as chew the metal bars of their cage, run endlessly in circles, or bite their own feet as a way to cope with the fear of the thing that they know is coming and cannot avoid.”

          “Do you mean that something like that…” _Surely not—what monster would subject a man to such treatment?_ He felt ill at the thought.

          “Was done to him? No, certainly not. Yet, somewhere in the past, it’s possible that he was in a position where no matter what he did, there was no escape. Or a mistake resulted in some disastrous consequence. So now any time something reminds him of that experience, the anxiety returns. What was he doing, you said, when you observed this?”

          “Nothing in particular. I have noticed it more than once. Is there any way to know…?”

          “What caused it?” Köhler replied with a vague gesture. “I doubt that. It may well have begun much earlier in his life, possibly with the loss of his parents—you told me they were deceased. Remember, too, that you and I were too old for the _Hitler-Jugend_ by the time it was established—but he was not.  This tendency of being worried or anxious may stem from his experiences in those days as I have heard that the HJ boys are encouraged to treat one another very cruelly. And we know he was subjected to some sort of violent attack by someone not long ago—it may be related to that[2]. However, we might never be able to determine why. He himself may not even remember.”

          “Can anything be done?”

          “Indeed, yes. What I would prescribe in such a case is a complete change of scene; fresh air, sunshine, interesting work.” He chuckled. “The Army has already done that by sending him here. If we are lucky, the desert itself may do more to cure him than I can. That, combined with good companions and a wise commander,” the doctor added. “However, if he happens to fall into the anxious state in your presence, say nothing. Draw no attention to it. Send him on an errand, or give him a different task to do that will interrupt the cycle of anxious thoughts. Now, let me have a look at your shoulder…”

          Hans Dietrich sighed with resignation. “Very well,” he replied and began to unbutton his shirt.

 

          In their tent that evening, Arnheiter was attempting to make a drawing, quite unaware that he had been the topic of a serious conversation in the HQ tent. He scowled with annoyance, and tore the page out of his sketchbook, crumpling it up and adding it to the small pile of paper they saved to be used for lighting fires.

          “What’s wrong?” inquired his tentmate Konrad Genscher, curious. “Is it going badly?”

          “Yes, because I only got a few seconds to look at the creatures, not long enough.”

          “Creatures? What creatures?” Konrad asked, apprehensive. Had Fritz here found out his secret already?

          “I don’t know what they are called.  They look like mice, a little, with long furry tails, but bigger. I only saw them, two of them, for just a moment before they disappeared into a hole in the rocks.” He sighed. “So none of my sketches look right. The proportions are wrong, but I don’t have any way to go look at one again.”

          Konrad gave him a knowing smile. “Don’t be too sure. If you are ready and dressed before dawn and reveille, you might have a chance.” What were friends for, after all? He had been secretly befriending a small colony of _Wüstenmäuse **[3]**_ —desert mice—by giving them small bits of bread saved from his own rations. The next morning, he would invite his new friend and tentmate to come along and see them.

          “How? I don’t know where they are.”

          “Wait and see, my friend.” He reached to put out the light. “Wait and see.”

 

Chapter 1

A Cunning Plan

  1. **October 1941**



          Sergeant Sam Troy of the Rat Patrol whistled softly, as he focused the approaching German tank column in his binoculars. _Twelve halftracks, five tanks._

          "We're supposed to stop that?" asked his driver, Hitchcock, incredulous.  "We’re kind of outnumbered…"

          "We don’t have to stop it, just hold it up long enough for the British to get there first."  They were involved in a race to the town of Al-Jawari[4], currently held by a small contingent of the 6th Australian Division.  The British 7th Armoured and the Cameron Highlanders were on their way to support the Australians, but they wouldn't arrive in time to prevent the town's falling to the Germans—which is where the Rat Patrol came in.  The outcome of this race across the desert depended on them.  Al-Jawari wasn’t a large town, but its location was what made it significant; it straddled a secondary road between the ports of Derna and Agedabia—a road that could be used to supply Rommel’s forces if the major coast road was in Allied control.  It was important to make sure that road was not available for the Axis forces to use. Given their heading, it was reasonable to assume that this reconnaissance column was part of the force that was going to take control of Al-Jawari. _Not if we can help it…_

“That’s not all, Troy,” added Sgt. Moffitt, pointing toward the head of the column as he lowered his own field glasses.  “Look whose party we’re about to crash.”

          Troy took a closer look and swore under his breath as he focused on the lead patrol car. “Our old pal Dietrich,” he growled. “Just our luck.” If their mission to hold up or delay that column had been difficult to begin with, it was now doubly so. The average German officers they had experience with were highly methodical, but unimaginative. Hans Dietrich, on the other hand, was anything but average.

          “He sure must be in Rommel’s good books,” commented Tully Pettigrew laconically. “Look at all that armor they gave him. That’s more than his outfit usually has, isn’t it?”

          “Well, that doesn’t change anything,” Troy declared as he turned his back toward the Germans and crouched down among the rocks on the hillside. “Just makes our day a little more exciting. One thing for sure, we can’t do much to halt them out here in this open country.  We need to get them hemmed in, cornered somehow.” He turned to Moffitt once more. “Got any ideas?”

          “Maybe,” the Englishman replied, tapping a finger on the map he had spread out on the hood of his jeep. He then looked up and pointed toward a formidable escarpment rising out of the desert to the east of their position. “There is a way through those bluffs,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s wide enough for tanks, say two by two, but it’s narrow enough to make a good ambush, if they were going that way. For them, it’s a shorter route to Al-Jawari than the one Dietrich is taking; he’s leading that column along a road that will avoid that escarpment.”

          Troy nodded, taking another look at the Panzer Reconnaissance column and estimating their rate of travel. “I think we’ve got time to check that out. Let’s go take a look at this road of yours.”

          Some time later, the four members of the Rat Patrol were looking down from a height into a steep-sided defile, through which ran the road that Moffitt had described.  They were in what passed for a mountain range in this region, called the Green Mountains, or _Al Jabal al Akhdar_. “You’re right,” said Troy, fists on his hips as he looked along the road below them in both directions. “It is a good place for a trap. There’s only one problem…”

          “I know, old boy—you don’t need to say it. It looks like a trap.”

          “There’s no way Dietrich would take that column through here—it’s like asking to get ambushed. He’d have to be crazy or desperate to come this way, and he’s not desperate. He’s holding all the aces.”

          The English sergeant nodded, but there was a speculative look in his eyes. “But he doesn’t always play it safe, you know… he takes chances just as we do if he thinks the odds are in his favor.  He’d do it if he thought going this way was his best chance—or the only chance—of getting to Al-Jawari in time to drive off the reinforcements and take the town themselves. And they’re probably not the only column headed that way.” Moffitt gazed at the late-afternoon shadows creeping across the road below them, and racked his brain for ideas.

          Troy turned to him suddenly, a light in his eyes. He had been seized with an idea. “You said this route was shorter than the way they’re going now, south around this formation. Shorter by how much?”

          “Oh, quite a bit, I’d say.  Judging by the speed they’re moving at, he’d save at least eight hours, possibly even ten.”

          "When are the 7th Armoured and the Camerons getting to Al-Jawari?"

          "Sometime the day after tomorrow is about the earliest they could be."

          The plan leaped into Troy's mind.  "OK, here’s what we’ll do.  We need to make sure our German friend out there finds out about this road.  But it can’t be you, Moffitt—he’s seen you recently, up close.”

          “I could do it, Troy…”

          “I know you could, with anyone else but Dietrich. But face it—around here, anybody dressed like the locals who is taller than he is? With grey eyes? He’ll know it’s you.” Troy thought a minute and went on. “But you can send one of your Arab friends, or one of your father’s acquaintances, to tell him about it, can't you?"

          "Very possibly. There is a village not far away where we knew the head man and his family."

          The American sergeant grinned. "Good. Then we just need to have the 7th Armoured send a nice message that the Jerries will overhear, telling the Aussies that they're coming about fifteen to twenty hours earlier than they'd expected."

          Hitch grinned.  "That's great, Sarge!  Dietrich won't think he has any choice—he'll have to come through here, and we'll be waiting for him."

          "After we're finished," said the Englishman lightly, "they can put up a nice plaque here and call it Thermopylae."

          "Oh, no," groaned the Ivy League dropout.  "Don't say that…"

          Troy looked from one to the other, confused.  "What?"

          "Well, it's like this, Sarge.  A long time ago—we studied this in Ancient History—there was this king of Sparta, uh, what's-his-name?"

          "Leonidas," said Moffitt.

          "Yeah, that's right.  Leonidas.  Well, he and three hundred Spartans held the Pass of Thermopylae for three days against Cyrus and the Persians, who had the biggest army in the known world."

          "Sounds good so far, " replied Troy.

          "Except they were slaughtered to the last man."

          “Well, that’s not so good,” muttered Tully Pettigrew while watering the jeep.

          "But they held the pass," supplied Moffitt helpfully, with an amused twinkle in his eye..

          "All right, you two," growled Troy.  "The next time I want a history lesson, I'll ask for it!"  While they had been telling him that tale, however, another thought had come to him.  "I've got another idea," he began.

 <<<<<>>>>> 

  1. **October 1941, 0500 hours**



          In the HQ tent, in the back one-third of it that he’d had partitioned off as his own quarters, Hans Dietrich was awake.  As it was an hour yet before dawn, he should have still been asleep.  He wasn’t.

          Finally giving up the effort to go back to sleep, he sat up on the canvas cot and began to dress. It was an awkward process at the present, as he had strained his left shoulder nearly a month earlier. It had been improving, but now that they were on the move and no longer in camp, the injured muscles were aggravated and the pain had been disturbing his sleep the last couple of nights. He wasn’t sure why—the cause might be as simple as holding up the heavy 10 x 50 binoculars for too long. As he buttoned his shirt, Dietrich became aware of a sound—a sound that ought not to be there. It sounded like the movements of an animal, but he had seen no animals in the area larger than a jerboa or a mongoose. As quickly as he could, he quietly pulled his boots on, with jaw clenched against the pain in his shoulder. Then he silently got to his feet and moved to the entrance of the tent, alerting the sentry and motioning for the soldier to follow him without a sound.

 <<<<<>>>>> 

           Dawn was approaching as Troy, bare-headed, crawled under a tank with several packets of explosives.  _This should give ‘rude awakening’ a whole new meaning_ , he thought to himself with a grim smile.  This was just a diversion, to keep Dietrich and his reconnaissance company occupied while Moffitt and Tully had time to set up the ambush in that ravine. Troy prepared the spot to place the packets as he heard Hitch quietly hiking back to the jeep to wait for him. They had had to leave the vehicle some distance away in order not to be heard.

          Then a soft voice spoke disconcertingly near. "Don't move, Sergeant."

          Troy froze. _Damn_ … From the position he was in, he could, by turning his head slightly, see a pair of well-polished boots.  It was, of course, Captain Dietrich—by now, he'd know that voice anywhere.

          "Throw your pistol out here, and hand the rest of your equipment out as well," Dietrich directed him, calmly.  He didn't sound as though he'd been awakened at an ungodly hour of the morning, but Troy had been sure the whole camp was asleep when he and Hitch had made their way in.

          He followed the German's instructions, having little choice in the matter once he’d heard the unmistakable sound of the bolt being locked down on a Mauser rifle, presumably in the hands of a guard or sentry. _Careful, don’t sound like you expected this to happen, or he’ll get wise._  "Don't you ever sleep?"  he asked, making sure to sound irritated.

          "Not when I hear small, soft noises in my camp before dawn, Sergeant.  I thought it would be as well to check for rats.  As you see, I did find one."  Troy could practically hear Dietrich smiling.  "Come out now, slowly."

          As Troy crawled backward out of his position, he heard the jeep driving off.  _Good for Hitch!_   "Your driver, I take it," observed Dietrich.  "I hear only one jeep.  Where are your other men?"

          The American shrugged.  "No idea.  Sorry, you'll just have to settle for me."  He slowly got to his feet at the point of the German's pistol. As he had guessed, another man was holding a rifle on him as well. It didn’t matter—he had accomplished what he came for, which was attaching a radio tracking device underneath the number plate of one of the halftracks. _Now we’ll know where they are and if they’ve taken the bait._

          As there was no further need for silence, Dietrich raised his voice. “ _Wache! Komm’ schnell! Es gibt Feinde im Lager!”_ It was as if he had struck a beehive with a stick. Men—at least those who were awake and dressed—then came out of every conceivable place, prepared for a fight.  Two of them in particular charged straight for the HQ tent from somewhere else in the camp; one was short and dark-haired, while the other was taller and blond. However, a somewhat older man, a sergeant, arrived first. “Kunzler,” said Dietrich to the sergeant, “have a detail search the camp. I caught this man, a commando, attempting to sabotage a tank with hidden explosives. See to it at once.”

          “ _Ja, mein Herr_.” He turned and began giving orders.

          Dietrich spoke briefly to the guards, and went back inside the tent, quickly moving into the back portion to finish dressing since he had gone outside wearing neither his cap nor his field jacket.  He pulled on the jacket, left sleeve first, and then buttoned it; then, as he had for the last ten days, he picked up the field-grey arm sling that the doctor had given him, and started to put it on to support his injured left arm. _No,_ he thought suddenly. _I do not want Troy to know that. Especially as it is his doing…_ He folded the fabric up compactly and put it in the inner pocket of his jacket, and picked up his peaked cap.

          A few minutes later, two of the guards accompanied Troy and the sentry inside the HQ tent. This was not the semi-permanent headquarters tent in the camp, which Troy had once seen the inside of.  Instead, this was a temporary version, intended for only a night, or at most a day or two while the company was on the move. This tent was only just high enough for a man to stand upright inside, and about half the usual dimensions; it was held up by steel poles driven into the ground instead of solid 4 x 4 wooden posts.

          At a spoken order from Dietrich, the two guards firmly tied Troy to a chair, and the chair along with his hands to the center pole of the tent. 

          "I apologize for this necessity, Sergeant," the officer said, coming back around to face the American, "but you have a …certain talent for escaping from the men who guard you.  So, you will remain here with me where I can see you. You will please note that any attempt to free yourself will cause the tent to collapse, which would hardly go unseen."  He sat down at the table and proceeded to ignore Troy while he filled out some papers, swallowing a yawn in the process.

          Troy grinned.  _He is a mere mortal, after all… no matter how much he tries to hide that._

          "I was not surprised to find you in my camp," said Dietrich as he replaced a stack of papers in a steel box.  "We are advancing on an objective—therefore, I was expecting you and your men to be in the area."

          "Oh, too bad,” said Troy lightly.  “If we'd known you were expecting us, we'd have dropped in yesterday afternoon for tea."

          The captain gave him an odd look for a moment, one eyebrow lifted, but made no reply.  Outside the tent, the camp was stirring, awakening to the duties of a new day.  An orderly entered;  he seemed surprised to see the captain already working, and even more surprised to see an American soldier trussed to the tent pole.  Dietrich spoke to him briefly, held up two fingers, and the man vanished, only to reappear presently with a tin tray which held portions of dense black bread and some hard cheese, as well as a flask of coffee and two cups.  "I assume, Sergeant, that you haven't eaten breakfast.  Nor have I.  We are taking you along with us to Al-Jawari, but we won't starve you."  There were officers who would readily eat their own meal in front of a prisoner who had none, but he was not among them.  Even though he knew for a fact that the British and their allies had not only better food, but more of it, than he and his men had, civilized men did not behave so. Dietrich poured a cup for himself, and one for Troy, instructing the orderly to hold the prisoner's cup for him.

          “No, I haven’t.” Troy was surprised. Whatever he had expected from being a captive in Dietrich’s camp, he had not expected to share in their breakfast.  “Thanks.  That smells good," he said politely as the orderly approached him with the coffee.

          Dietrich grimaced slightly as he tasted his own.  "Unfortunately, it is not.  It is what there is, however.  Many of the supplies destined for us never arrive."

          "Like they say, Captain, there's a war on." The American grinned, teasing.

          "Well, Sergeant, it seems you are now reaping the fruits of your own endeavours."

          "That's the way it goes."  Troy paused.  "You don't trust me enough to untie one of my hands?"

          The tall German actually laughed for a moment, briefly and with no lack of sarcasm.  "Not in the least, Sergeant."

          After they'd finished, the orderly left, taking the food and coffee with him.  "Thanks," repeated Troy, meaning it.  "By the way, you haven't even asked me to tell you what we're doing here."

          "No, I have not.  I know from past experience that you will not tell me, that no amount of threats will induce you to do so, and that any attempts to discover the nature of your mission are an exercise in futility.  As I have neither the time nor the energy to waste, I am hoping that your presence in my patrol car all the way to Al-Jawari will perhaps prove to be a deterrent to your men."  _I am also hoping that you will inadvertently tell me what I want to know…_

           They were interrupted at this point by a voice outside the tent.  "Herr Hauptmann…"

         " _Kommen Sie herein,_ " Dietrich replied, and a young soldier entered. “ _Arnheiter. Was ist los?_ ” he asked, seeing the apprehension in the clerk’s eyes.

           “ _Der Sender in Funkwagen funktioniert gar nicht,”_ the soldier replied, agitated. “ _Ich weiß nicht, warum es schief gegangen ist_ ,” he added, explaining that he could not get the transmitter working again.

          Dietrich eyed him, disconcerted. Arnheiter had been in the unit for three weeks now, and the last several days he’d been doing clerical duties alongside him in the HQ tent. There was no reason that the boy should be reporting to him with such trepidation. True, it was a major problem if the transmitter in the radio truck was out of order, but in these desert conditions, the cause could be almost anything. It didn’t help that the man had had training as a radioman, but not much actual field experience.  Now that they were not in camp but on the move, they needed Arnheiter as a backup radioman more than a clerk-typist. _“Beruhigen Sie sich,”_ the captain told him firmly, and the youth made a visible effort to calm his anxiety.  “ _Sie sollen Feldwebel Jahnke finden; er kann Sie helfen, und Genscher kann das auch.”_

          The soldier who had just come in was, Troy thought, the "typical Jerry"—blond and blue-eyed, just like most of the German soldiers one saw in the newsreel photos.  His sunburned face and neck showed that he was new to the desert and unaccustomed to the conditions.  There was one thing, however, that Troy noticed more than the soldier's appearance.  The hands he held clasped behind his back were white at the knuckles.  _He's scared stiff,_ he thought to himself.  _But of Dietrich?  That doesn't make sense…_

          The boy was probably the same age as Hitch, about twenty or so; he made what sounded like a report to his captain.  The only words Troy understood were “…funktioniert nicht.” Something wasn’t working—and from the soldier's bearing, it was probably bad news. 

          Once the boy had gone, Troy let out a breath.  _What was all that about?_   But he didn't ask.  He waited, curious to see what Dietrich would say.

          The captain scowled, annoyed.  “That should not have happened,” he muttered, half to himself. Of course, Sergeant Troy of the accursed Rat Patrol had seen everything, including how fearful the soldier was.  Dietrich was proud of the _Heere_ and its long traditions, and he hated having his army dishonoured by those of its own personnel who persisted in behaving like swine.  That in itself was bad enough, but having it witnessed by the enemy was far worse.  "Contrary to your propaganda, Sergeant," he said bitterly, "brutality is not standard procedure in the Wehrmacht. He is still learning that making a simple mistake is no cause for dread."

          “I take it he’s the new guy.”

          “One of them.”

          "Well, you've dealt with scared troops before," Troy offered, feeling conciliatory.

          "Certainly I have.  Soldiers are often frightened."  He raised his dark eyes to meet the American's gaze.  "But not of me, Sergeant."  When Arnheiter had arrived on the ship after being transferred from a unit in France, it had been obvious that he’d been badly beaten by someone.  But Dietrich hadn’t asked the circumstances, and the new clerk had never explained. Whatever had happened to him, the captain had a bad feeling that it had gone on for quite some time—Arnheiter was a good clerk and a hard worker, but he tended to react badly to odd things. He started at loud noises, for instance, but not gunfire… “And I do not know why,” he added, his tone grim.

 

          _Lieutenant Bergmann came to him one afternoon, looking provoked. He had just come back from ten days in the battalion hospital, so he had not met any of the new men until that day. “That new fellow with the odd name, the blond one with the blaues Auge,” he said, referring to the soldier’s bruised eye, “I think he is a coward, Herr Hauptmann.”_

_“Indeed?” Dietrich had said. “What makes you say so?” Bergmann was not the first to call young Arnheiter an Angsthase._

_“He jumps every time I open my mouth,” the Heidelberger had complained, “and he looks twice, as if he expects enemies around every corner.”_

_“Well, consider, Lieutenant.  Why do you suppose a man would develop such a habit?”_

_Emil Bergmann had stood there in the HQ tent, nonplussed and shaking his head. “I cannot imagine, mein Herr.”_

_“Then let me remind you of a proverb,” Dietrich replied, having guessed at least part of the explanation. “It is said that 'once burned is twice shy'; is that not so?” At the junior officer’s obvious lack of comprehension, he said with some exasperation, “It is entirely possible that he has good reason to be wary. Most men do not learn such caution for nothing.”_

 

          Troy commented,  "If one of our officers hit an enlisted man, he'd be thrown in the stockade for about a hundred years."

          "Quite right," said Dietrich, and then pulled himself up short.  Troy had the unnerving ability—he'd noticed this before—of making him say far more than he'd ever intended to. 

          "By the way," asked Troy, "what did the kid do wrong, anyway?  He sure thought he was in trouble."

          "Probably nothing. I assume it is an unknown mechanical malfunction.”

          “In the RAF, I hear they call that a gremlin.”

* * *

[1] _Angsthase_ : lit, a ‘fear-bunny’, i.e., timid as a rabbit.

[2]See the story “Sand Dunes and Palm Trees”, which precedes this one.

[3] That is, the North African gerbil, _Gerbillus campestris_

[4] To avoid giving offense, no actual town names have been used. Al-Jawari translates roughly as “stockings” or “socks”.


	2. Preparing for Battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Both the Germans under Captain Dietrich and the Rat Patrol are making ready for the assault on the town of Al-jawari.

          “ _Du Esel_ ,” said Konrad Genscher, shaking his head. “There’s nothing wrong with it at all. You had the connectors in backward. This one goes here, not there—that’s the plug for the receiver, not the transmitter. See?” He demonstrated. “Working fine now…. what’s wrong?”

          His friend and tentmate had gone white as chalk.  “It’s… it’s not _kaputt_? _Es ist nicht meine Schuld?_ ” His hands were shaking.

          “No, of course it’s not your fault—“ Konrad said, worried, and called out, “Wolf! Rudi!” When the two other men, slightly older than he, arrived, he said, “I don’t know what to do, what’s wrong with him?”

          Wolfgang Bauer seized the fair-haired young man by the shoulders. “Friedl, _was ist los_? You’re trembling like my granny’s rice pudding.”

          “Something awful’s going to go wrong,” Arnheiter said miserably, feeling as though he were going to be sick. “And it will be my fault.”

          “ _Wahnsinnig…_ That’s stupid, you know that? We have three-fourths of our company here, 87 men, and the whole mission will fail because of one Thuringian private? _Quatsch_!” He punched Arnheiter jokingly on the shoulder, but it didn’t help. “ _Ach,_ _scheiße_ ,” muttered Bauer.

          Rudi Hartmann looked around, and said, “I see Schäfer the medic over there—let me get him.”

          “No, don’t. I know what to do,” said Bauer. “Arnheiter!” he said sharply, in a tone like an irate schoolmaster. “Tell me the first fifteen prime numbers— _schnell_!”

          Arnheiter focused on his comrade’s eyes, intently. “Two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-nine, thirty-one… thirty-seven, forty-one, forty-three, forty-seven.” He took a deep breath.

          “Feel better, _Junge_?” Arnheiter’s hands had stopped shaking, and his breathing had slowed down. “Good boy. Easy does it.”

          Hartmann and Genscher both stared. “Wolf, how did you do that?”

          The radio corporal thumped Arnheiter on the arm. “One of my father’s friends had shell-shock from the first war. When he got that way, _Vati_ said the only way to snap him out of it was to make him run, or make him do arithmetic. We don’t have time to go for a run, we’re moving out in a half hour.” He turned back to the youngest member of their little band of friends, which Konrad Genscher had jokingly dubbed “the Wolf pack”, as Wolf Bauer was the most senior of the four. “Friedl, we’ve been out here, most of us, since June when we were still 5th Light Division. You’re right—a thousand things could go wrong today, we could fail completely to take this God-forsaken _Kuhdorf_ we’re headed for, and we could all get killed. No one will blame any of it on you. _Verstehst du?_ ”

          Arnheiter nodded.  His mind was realizing that everything was all right, but his nerves hadn’t caught on yet.  “ _Ja, aber…_ ” Still pale, he vanished into the scant shrubbery to be sick. However, he was back at the radio truck in a couple of minutes, hastily straightening his collar and running a hand through his thick fair hair. _I will not let everything fail because of me…_

          “Everything all right here?” Sergeant Jahnke came by to check on the communications truck and its crew.  “We’re pulling out soon, but there was a delay—we’ve got a prisoner. Hauptmann Dietrich caught him sneaking around. It’s the leader of those _verdammte Ratten_ , so the others are probably around.  Keep a sharp eye out to the rear—they like to attack from behind. What’s with him?” he demanded, seeing Genscher giving Arnheiter his canteen. “Is he sick? Besides from the wretched food, that is… the new ones always have trouble from that.”

          “No, no, just a touch of nerves. New guy, first offensive….you know how it is.” Rudi Hartmann’s tone was bland, as though there were nothing unusual.

          “Fine. But get back to your tank, Hartmann. You and your card-playing pals can reconvene later.”

          “Yes, Sergeant.”

          “And, you, Arnheiter—”

_“Ja, mein Herr…”_

          “Get over to HQ on the double.  They need you to help pack it up since you’re acting clerk.”

          “ _Zu Befehl,_ ” Arnheiter said. Then he looked from Rudi to the departing sergeant’s back. “I got you in trouble…forgive me.”

          “No, Jahnke’s a good sort. But he’s right… I do have to get back there. Chin up, Fritz— _halte die Ohren steif_!”[1]

 

          Up on the ridge above the Germans’ temporary camp, Hitchcock pulled up the radio antenna and picked up the radiotelephone. He was near enough to the other jeep that he could use voice instead of Morse code.  “Will Scarlet to Little John, come in…”

          The radio crackled with static and then Moffitt’s voice could be heard clearly as he got onto the same frequency. “Little John here. How are things in Nottingham?”

          “Robin Hood’s in the dungeon. The Sheriff caught him.”

          “Did he hit the bullseye? Is he all right?”

          Hitch grinned. “Right in the gold. Nobody saw it but me, though. No golden arrow for him this time. He was trying for a second trophy when the Sheriff stepped in. Seems to be fine—they’ve got him tied up in HQ.”

          “Any sign of Gisbourne? Or is it just the Sheriff’s men?” Moffitt was asking if they had seen any other German units in the area.

          “Just the Sheriff and his boys. He’s got most of them here, though. There can’t be many left back there.”

          “Good to know. Did they see you?”

          “Not sure.”

          “Make sure they do… make them think we’re following them trying to get our fearless leader back. But stay out of range. Little John out.”

          “Scarlet over and out.”

         Some miles away, in the ravine, Tully Pettigrew turned to Moffitt, uneasy. “I don’t like that, Sarge. We can’t leave Troy there with them… not if we’re going to bring this ravine down on top of them.”

          “I know, but we might not have a choice…” Seeing the look on his driver’s face, Moffitt forced himself to smile. “Troy’s had a lot of practice at escaping from worse situations than that.  He’ll find an opportunity and Hitch will be not far away.” He had already contacted the 7th Armoured Division and explained to them the reasoning behind asking them to send a false message indicating that they would reach Al-Jawari half a day ahead of their original ETA.

          Troy, left alone for a minute or two, was looking around him at the interior of Dietrich's HQ tent, hoping to see anything which might be useful information.  As he mentally noted everything in sight, he fidgeted with his bonds and the pole they were attached to.  Suddenly, his fingers found a joint in the pole.  Will it move?  He tried it, and felt it twist slightly.  Given time, he might be able to get the joint apart.  Whether that would be any use or not remained to be seen.  He was about to try when he heard Dietrich returning. 

          With him was the same blond young man who had come earlier to report the malfunction of the radio equipment. However, now he showed no signs of fear or nervousness as he methodically gathered up all of the various things on tables in the HQ tent, and stowed them in steel file boxes, each one labeled on the outside in stenciled black paint. He and another man picked up the table, folded up its legs, and carried it outside to the waiting truck. At the same time, Dietrich had gone into the back of the tent and soon handed a metal box about the size of one of the ammunition boxes out to one of the men who loaded it onto the same truck—presumably that box contained the captain’s own personal kit.

          The last thing loaded before striking the tent was Troy himself. A burly lieutenant whom Dietrich introduced as Lieutenant Bergmann came and untied Troy from the tent pole and moved him outside to the patrol car. There were enough men around that Troy chose not to try escaping; besides, escaping later would give him a chance to see more.

          As the lieutenant directed a sergeant to tie him up firmly but not so tightly as to be painful, Troy realized that the lines binding his arms had been secured to the interior of the vehicle itself.  Apparently they had learned something since the last time they had had him in their hands. However, his attention was on Dietrich, who spoke briefly with the man who had packed up the maps and files.

          “ _Arnheiter_ ,” said the captain, “ _können Sie Auto fahren?_ ” Troy recognized the word “auto”, but nothing else.

_“Ja, mein Herr, gewiß…”_

          “ _Dann werden Sie mein Fahrer heute._ ” Dietrich gestured to the front of the patrol car.

          There was no mistaking the pleasure in the soldier’s expression. He said something that Troy of course couldn’t understand, but it looked as if he had said, “Who, me?” He saluted smartly and went around to the driver’s seat.  _If I didn’t know better, I’d say that other guy this morning was this one’s identical twin—he almost doesn’t seem like the same man._ But he was, no doubt. There was a round white scar on his right hand which Troy remembered having seen earlier that morning.

 

[1] Lit., keep your ears stiff; equiv. to “Keep a stiff upper lip”


	3. On the Move

          The German column stopped at midday for a break, which was a relief for everyone to get water, a little food, and a chance for some shade if they were lucky. There was a tiny settlement near where they stopped with some scrubby trees, and most importantly, a well. Troy scanned the scene intently, and made a mental note of where this place was. It was too small to call it a village, and it certainly wasn't an oasis—but it might be useful to them to find it again someday. 

          Dietrich made some casual gesture which apparently indicated to the soldier driving the car that he was at liberty, for the blond young man nodded briefly, murmured _“Danke, mein Herr,_ ” and left them. He went to join some of the other men who were taking turns drawing up water from the well, but when he took his turn at the winch, he took the pail of water away from the soldier apparently intending to take it from his hands.

          Dietrich eyed him with a scowl until he saw what the boy was doing. Instead of taking the water for himself, he poured it out to fill the jugs of the women who were waiting there to get water, who were probably assuming they wouldn't get their turn at the well again until the Germans had gone on their way. Then he put his back into turning the winch once more and brought up a fresh pail of water, only to realize that he had nothing to put the water in, judging by his expression. One of the women smiled kindly and brought him a clay jug; the driver's face lit up, and he bowed to her as he took the jug. Making a ‘wait-a-minute’ sort of gesture, he poured the water into the borrowed jug and sprinted back to the Kübelwagen.

          As he arrived, the captain nodded with approval. " _Das war gut getan, Arnheiter, ganz anständig_ ," he said, praising his driver's gentlemanly behavior toward the local populace.

          The youth looked shy and somewhat nervous as he offered the jug of water to Dietrich. " _Es ist frisch und kalt, Herr Hauptmann._ "

          _"Sehr vielen Dank_ ," Dietrich replied, but he didn't take it. Instead, he gestured to Troy and continued to speak for a moment. Following the officer’s directions, the driver carefully filled his own canteen, deftly untied Troy's left hand, and gave the canteen to him to drink.

          Troy accepted the water, and drank it gratefully, but took a moment to see if he could take advantage of briefly having one free hand. _Not yet_ , he thought— _there are too many of them and they're not busy with anything else. A better opportunity is bound to come along, when half a dozen of them aren't looking this way_. He gave the canteen back to the blond kid, who refilled it at once and handed it up to the captain. This time, Dietrich took the canteen and slaked his own thirst, while never taking his gaze off Troy.

          Troy looked away, thinking. _Something strange here…_ he couldn’t quite put a finger on it, but Dietrich was acting a little oddly. Troy knew that the officer was right-handed; he’d seen him enough to know that. He realized, however, that since he’d been captured that morning, he’d hadn’t seen the captain using his left hand at all. _Wounded, maybe? Keep an eye on him… it might be useful to know if he has a bad wing._ It could be—Troy saw Dietrich use his left hand to hold the canteen while putting the cap on, but he kept the left arm against his side.

          A moment later, another one of the soldiers, shorter and with dark-brown hair, suddenly approached the staff car. He gestured to the captain excitedly and pointed back to the women at the well. _"Sie haben Melone!"_

          _"Ausgezeichnet_ ," replied the tall officer, with a sudden smile brightening his angular features. Whatever he said, to Troy it sounded like a prolonged sneeze. It was not one of the ten or so words that he could recognize, so he had to just wait and see what it meant. Dietrich fished a small pouch from his pocket and tossed it to the soldier with a pleased expression. Then he turned to Troy. "According to Genscher there, the villagers have melons they are willing to sell to us. I have told him to purchase as many as he can."

          Meanwhile, the blond driver had filled all three of the canteens—Dietrich's, Troy's, and his own—and gone back to the well to return the jug. Now he was seated on the ground, having a smoke in the shade of one of the cars and apparently sharing a joke with some of his fellows. Dietrich perched on the top of the passenger seat, which enabled him to sit down but still gave him an elevated vantage point. He was watching everything that was happening around them— _like one of those black and white collie dogs_ , thought Troy—but his gaze kept returning to the soldier who was driving them that day, with a look of perplexity.

          "What's the matter, Dietrich? You look like a man with a problem."

          "No, Sergeant," the officer replied after a moment's pause. "Only a mystery.  Something that doesn't fit."

          Troy grinned. "And it's driving you crazy." The more he could get Dietrich to talk, the better the chance of finding out something useful.

          That earned Troy a look of annoyance. "I wouldn't go so far as that. But I don't like things that don't make sense."

          At that point, the soldier whom Dietrich had given the money to emerged from the tent nearest the well, and waved to some of the other men to help him. Having neither a cart nor a wheelbarrow to carry away the melons, a dozen of the men simply formed a brigade to distribute the booty among the whole company. The lieutenant, Bergmann, came over to the car with a smile as Genscher followed him, carrying the best melon to their commander with a triumphant grin.

          _These guys don't just obey Dietrich_ , Troy observed. _They like him. They all like him. Useful to know. _Bergmann had a knife and divided the golden-yellow fruit among the three of them. Using the knife, he whacked the third share of the melon into smaller pieces so Troy could eat it with only one free hand. Then Troy saw what he was looking for. The lieutenant did the same thing with the piece that he gave to Dietrich; he cut the wedge of melon into thirds, so the captain needed only one hand to manage it. He kept his other arm against his side, the elbow resting on top of his holstered pistol. _Aha—I was right…he’s not using that arm at all._

          The short dark-haired soldier eyed Troy sharply, his eyes moving from him to the captain and back again.  Then he turned away and returned to his comrades. Bergmann kept his eye on Troy while Dietrich went to go confer with some of the Arabs near the well.

          The juicy, creamy-white flesh of the melon was delicious, and easily the best thing he'd eaten in the last month. _I need to ask Moffitt what these are_ , he thought to himself. He gestured to the German lieutenant that he wanted some of the seeds; the other man shrugged, picked up a few and handed them to the American after rubbing them dry.

          Troy slipped them into his pocket as Dietrich returned. "We are departing presently, Sergeant. Do you need anything else?"

          "No, just..." He gestured toward the dry shrubs at the edge of the wadi. Dietrich nodded, and sent Bergmann to untie his other hand and go with him. When they returned from the bushes, the stocky lieutenant calmly tied him up again and went to go get the men rounded up and back to their vehicles after their respite in the shade.

         

          Konrad Genscher hurried back to the rest of the men as they were getting ready. “ _Feldwebel_ Kunzler,” he said, breathless.  “ _Herr Hauptmann…_ ”

          The sergeant turned as Genscher said his name. “ _Ja? Was gibt’s mit ihm_?”

          “The American… he knows. I saw his face…”

          “ _Wie_? What sort of nonsense is this? He knows what?”

          “I saw him watching _Herr Hauptmann_ like a cat. And I saw him realize that the captain’s arm is hurt. He will try something, Sergeant.  Please, put another man to guard him—Fritz here is driving, he can’t watch _der Ami_ at the same time.”

          “ _Der Ami_? He is tied to the inside of the _Kübel_.  He can’t even move—he won’t try anything.”  Genscher’s face fell. It worried him that the captain couldn’t really watch the American sergeant, either. 

          _On second thought,_ mused the first sergeant, _this American has done other things we didn’t think he could…_

           “Okay, I’ll bite," Troy said to Dietrich as the officer rinsed the sticky melon juice from his hands briefly and got back into the Kübelwagen. "What's your mystery? You keep looking at that kid, the blond guy, who's been driving. Is it him?"

          "Yes. There is something strange there."

          "Well, judging from that sunburn, he hasn't been here very long. Otherwise, he seems like a regular Boy Scout—thrifty, helpful, brave, clean and reverent. What's the problem?"

          "You are right. He arrived only three weeks ago, transferred from a motorized-infantry unit in France. Hence the sunburn, as you say." The younger man paused, as if deciding how much he ought to divulge. "But he was transferred to Africa alone. There was a large number of men arriving in that group, but none were from his unit except Arnheiter. Only he, out of all his comrades, was sent out of France to the _Afrika Korps_."

          The man had a point; that was peculiar. "And you're wondering why they wanted to get rid of him," Troy remarked shrewdly.

          "Indeed.”  The officer frowned. "When he arrived, I observed signs that he was given to fighting, which is something I do not permit. But I have been watching him closely for some days, and I see no evidence of any quarrelsome nature. Quite the opposite."

          Troy shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe in his old unit, he was the goat." Schools and army camps always seemed to have one guy who everyone else piled on.

          "The goat?" Apparently Dietrich hadn't heard that expression.

          "Yeah, the bottom of the pecking order. Odd man out. The guy who gets picked on by all the others."

          "Possible. Yet that does not explain how he came to be here. " The officer seemed to give himself a mental shake, and retreated once more into the stiff reserve that he usually exhibited.  He could not imagine what impulse kept leading him into conversing with Sergeant Troy on the rare occasions they met.

          His conversation with the Arab village leaders had been most interesting. He had asked one of the head men about any other routes to Al-Jawari that they might be aware of. Even though this break for food, water, and rest was necessary, it still was a concern to him that they reach the town, along with _Kompanie_ 2, in enough time to take control of it before the British units of the 7th Armoured Division arrived to reinforce the existing garrison.

          A man named Mustafa Ali, the brother of the leader, Khalid, had nodded and shown him another road that would not only take them there, but bring them up in the rear of the British position. At that point, the exact location of the boundary between the British and the Axis territories was by no means easy to determine. So it was not at all unrealistic to try to take control of this town that would block the road from Dernah to El Agheila.  Mustafa Ali had indicated that the shorter route was a little steeper and less smooth than the easier route they were on, but also that it might give them the advantage of surprise.

          Dietrich stood a moment, considering this.  Mustafa Ali had given him a tin box containing a few English cigarettes in return for a few coins that the captain had in his pocket. German cigarettes at the present time were, frankly, execrable, so it was always worthwhile looking for others. It was polite to share, so when Arnheiter returned to the patrol car, Dietrich offered the cigarette tin to him as well. The driver didn’t take one, but offered to light it for the captain, who accepted.

          Then Dietrich noticed the other man who was approaching the car with Kunzler. “ _Was ist los, Kunzler_?”

          The sergeant gestured to the other man, to Arnheiter, and to Troy. Dietrich frowned, displeased, but apparently decided that his sergeant had a valid point as he motioned the other man to the remaining empty seat in the Kübelwagen. As he climbed in and sat down, Troy recognized him as the sentry from that morning. Dietrich also then offered the cigarette tin to him. “Would you care for a smoke, Sergeant?”

          Troy smiled. “No, thanks, Captain. They’re all yours.” But he wasn’t smiling at the German officer’s courteous gesture; he smiled because he had seen that very cigarette tin just the day before. There was no doubt it was the same one—it was scraped and dented along one edge where it had been used to wedge the hood of the jeep open a few inches. _So Moffitt has been here… excellent. So far, so good._

 

          As the column moved out across the desert, the American said lightly, "You know, Captain, we're gonna have to steal one of these VW's for ourselves.  They ride better than a jeep."

          The German frowned at him, but said nothing.

          The next hour passed without event.  The area they were driving through was featureless and uninteresting, unlike some other parts of Cyrenaica which reminded Troy of the Badlands, or some parts of western Colorado. _Guess I won't be writing a guidebook called ‘Welcome to Jerryland.’  Though it won't be theirs for long, if we can help it._ He was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong somewhere.  If the 7th Armoured or the Camerons didn't send that false message soon, it would be too late for Dietrich to decide to change course.

          Presently they heard a different sound as a motorcycle sped up to the front of the column, signaling to the captain, who made the ‘halt’ signal in the air with his right fist. " _Herr Hauptmann, Herr Hauptmann_ ," the rider shouted, running up to the patrol car.  Dietrich got out and went to him to see what the trouble was.  The man spoke agitatedly, saying something about Al-Jawari, die Engländer, and das Radiogramm.

          Troy looked away, as though he were totally uninterested.  _That's it!  That's got to be it!  The message to the Australians..._

          Dietrich left with the man toward one of the trucks, and returned presently, looking perturbed.  He spoke to Arnheiter, who got out, opened one of the  file boxes, and handed him a map; he traced on it with his finger, thinking.

          _There's the bait_ , thought Troy, hearing the pulse pounding in his ears.  _Come on, take it, take it..._

          The German captain had a brief exchange with a lieutenant, and gestured toward the escarpment rising in the distance.  The officer nodded, and bellowed at the men in the halftrack following the patrol car. The column started moving again—and changed direction.  _That’s the idea… hook, line, and sinker,_ thought Troy, and asked casually, "A detour, Captain?  Looks like you need better maps."

          He was rewarded by an annoyed glance.

 

          “Little John to Will Scarlet.  Come in…”

          “Will Scarlet.  Stand by, you’ve got company coming.  Are you and Friar Tuck ready?”

          “Ready and waiting. Have they seen you?”

          “Yeah. Your hat does nothing to keep the sun out of your eyes, you know.” Moffitt’s Royal Tank Regiment beret was a lot hotter, being black, than Hitch’s adopted red _képi_.

          “One gets used to it. They saw you wearing it?”

 **“** I made sure they did.”

          “And Robin Hood?”

          “He’s fine. They’ve been real careful, making sure he gets water. But there’s a sentry on him every minute. He’ll need help to get away.”

          There was a pause on the other end. “Very well. You’re sure they’re on the right path?”

          “Headed straight for you.” Hitch frowned. “Wait, aren’t you picking up the signal?”

          “Intermittently. But wait until almost ten before you go in. They’ll be a little less vigilant.”

          “Yeah, I know. Will Scarlet out.”

          “Over and out.”

 

          Around sunset, the column stopped and made camp.  It was a fairly makeshift affair, with no tents set up except the one for headquarters, one to protect the communications equipment, and one to shield the hastily dug latrine.  There was no mess tent nor field kitchen. Men simply gathered in little groups and used chemical-heat canisters to warm up a variety of canned rations.  A tallish soldier with brown hair and a mustache came into the HQ tent, where Troy had once more been tied to the center pole, and brought a tin plate of food to the man who had been Dietrich’s driver, who was sitting at a table along the wall of the tent with a radio set and the steel file boxes.  The two men conversed briefly. Then he brought some of the food to Troy as well and untied one hand, standing over him with a rifle until he finished eating it.  _I don’t know how these guys live on this stuff,_ Troy thought to himself. It seemed to be a conglomeration of peas, potatoes, and some unidentifiable kind of meat. _They’ve got to have the worst chow in the entire world…guys in jail eat better than this.  Funny, since German cooking is supposed to be first-rate. If so, they sure aren’t sending any of it to the army._

          Presently, Dietrich himself came into the tent, and sat down in the one chair at the table in the middle of the tent. For a few moments, his guard was down, and he looked exhausted. It didn’t last long, though, as he looked up and realized Troy was watching him. "Are you reasonably comfortable, Sergeant?"

          "Yeah, but this is the last time I go camping with you. You're no fun at all."

          Dietrich rolled his eyes. Troy’s sense of humor was apparently unaffected by spending all day tied up in a patrol car. "Yes, it is the last time, Sergeant Troy. After we take Al-Jawari, you will be turned over to another company and escorted to a POW camp.”

          A while later, the short dark-haired man who had brought the melons to them came into the HQ tent, and spoke to Dietrich and to the blond man as well, saying something about _das Radio_ and _der Signal._ He was frowning, and looking perplexed. He bent and examined something on the radio set on the table, and flipped a few switches. Finally, he shrugged, saying what sounded like “Nix.[1]” Dietrich said something to him, and then the lieutenant, who Troy remembered was called Bergmann, appeared and requested Dietrich's attention. They left together after the captain reminded Troy that the sentry was still on duty just outside.

          Troy sat there, slowly but methodically working the ropes on his wrists up and down over the joint of the steel pole. It might take him most of the night, but he fully intended not to be in this camp by the time the sun came up.

          At long last he heard what he had been waiting to hear—a soft voice humming softly outside the tent, so quietly that he almost didn’t hear it. He smiled as he recognized the melody; it was the first few bars of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” What it meant was that Hitch was there, waiting to take him out of the tent. ' _Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd…'_

          Casually, as though it meant nothing except a way to pass the time, Troy hummed the next few bars of the familiar song. ' _Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack, I don’t care if I never get back…'_ The fair-haired soldier at the table with the radio smiled. He checked his wristwatch, and then flipped a switch on the radio set, turning a dial to increase the volume a little.

          Troy saw a faint glimmer of light as the point of a knife slid downward along one of the end tent poles and silently cut through the cords holding the back flap closed.

          At 9:55, Radio Belgrade broadcast their nightly sign-off piece, “Lili Marleen”.  A woman’s alto voice, familiar to troops on both sides, sang:  
                              _“Vor der Kaserne, vor dem großen Tor,  
                              Stand eine Laterne, und steht sie noch davor…”_

          Mark Hitchcock slipped into the tent as silently as a cat. He cast his eyes toward the man seated at the radio, and gave Troy a questioning look, drawing a finger across his own throat.

          Troy shook his head firmly. _No. That kid gave me his own canteen today, twice. I’m not going to kill him if we don’t have to, unless he sees us and raises the alarm_. Hitch nodded, stepped forward, and struck the soldier on the back of the head with the hilt of his knife; the man silently slumped forward, head down on the table. Hitch paused a second and felt for a pulse in the man’s neck before he swiftly came around and sliced through the ropes securing Troy to the tent pole.

          “About time,” Troy whispered. “Let’s shake it…” He took one step toward the side table, snatched up the map that was spread out on it, and followed Hitch out the back wall of the tent.

          By the time Lale Andersen’s familiar recording had ended, they were gone.

[1] _nichts,_ ‘nothing’.

 


	4. Out of the Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dietrich and his men realize they are heading into a trap laid just for them. Can they find a way out?

          “What is it, Bauer?” Dietrich said to the _Funkgefreiter_ , the radio corporal.

          “We have been hearing a signal intermittently, mein Herr,” Wolf Bauer explained, his jaw set with anger. “But we couldn't pin it down. We kept thinking it was some stray signal from one of the other radio sets. Finally, after we stopped here and made camp, we kept hearing it again. But no other set is on, except for the one in your tent, sir. And that one’s on a different frequency now,” he said. “Genscher here came to check it.”

          “Yes, it’s tuned to Radio Belgrade,” said Dietrich.

          “So we knew it wasn’t coming from there. And then we found it.” Bauer's grey-green eyes were wrathful. “It was here all along.” He led them out of the communications tent and up to one of the halftracks. “Down there, Herr Hauptmann. Under the number plate.”

          The implication was obvious. _So that’s what Troy was doing here early this morning. They know exactly where we are—right where they want us to be. I believe the American idiom is, We’ve been set up…_ Dietrich fumed for a moment. _Glaub’n sie, dat wi doof sind **[1]**?_ he said to himself, lapsing into the Low German of his coastal boyhood, as he often did in his own private thoughts.

          He hastened back toward the headquarters tent, not quite at a run. _We have to find another route to Al-Jawari; I am certain now that Troy’s men are lying in wait for us on this road._  The sentry, Müller, was still on guard in front of the tent. _“Alles in Ordnung?” <\em>he asked Müller, who nodded._

__

          “ _Ja, Herr Hauptmann_. He’s perfectly quiet. Strange fellow—you’d think he didn’t even mind being a prisoner.” The guard shook his head, bemused. “Not what you’d expect from those commandos. He seemed almost happy…”

          _Happy?_ Dietrich scowled. _Now I know why—he’s been waiting all day for us to take the bait he so carefully laid for us to find…_ As he began to tell Müller what the radiomen had found, there came a groan from inside the tent.

          He yanked the flap open, and found Arnheiter dizzily trying to pick himself up off the ground where he had fallen, holding the back of his head with his left hand and attempting to steady himself with the right. Troy was gone. Dietrich shouted to the guard, “ _Wache! Der Gefangene ist weg_!” though he had no hope that the guards would find Troy—it was surely too late.

          The private looked pale already, but he went white as chalk when he got to his feet and realized that the prisoner was gone. Only the empty chair remained. “ _Schiet_ ,” muttered the captain under his breath, and reached to grasp his acting clerk by the arm to steady him. “Are you all right, Arnheiter?”

          “I don’t know, _mein Herr_.” He blinked a couple of times and instinctively rubbed the back of his head, where a large bump had already come up. “It doesn’t matter. You will have me shot, I know,” he said dully. _I liked it here, it was good…_ he couldn’t help thinking.

          “ _Unsinn_ ,” said the captain sharply. “Don’t be ridiculous. Are you hurt?”

          “Not much,” Arnheiter replied slowly, as he was overcome with shame. “I let him escape, _Herr Hauptmann_. It’s my fault.” _I’ve failed you…_

          “He tricked you into it, Arnheiter, by being so calm. He made you think he wouldn’t try anything. He tricked us all, myself included. He got away so silently that even Müller never heard anything. But that is not all that he did.” Dietrich explained quickly about the radio transmitter that Wolfgang Bauer had found hidden beneath the number plate on one of the halftracks. “Of course I will not have you shot… it is not the first time Sergeant Troy has escaped from us, and I doubt it will be the last. But now you’ve had a new lesson—never turn your back on him, or on any of his men. They will take any opportunity.” What he did not say was that the last time Troy had escaped from capture, he had killed the man guarding him and two others as well. _Gott sei Dank, he was kinder this time_. “Now help me look—how did he get out of here unseen?” Both men surveyed the scene, and then a gust of wind suddenly flapped the back wall of the tent where it ought to have been secured to the pole. Dietrich pointed. “That way.”

          Sure enough, both men could see boot prints in the earth both outside and inside the tent, once a lantern was brought to provide more light. To Dietrich, the chain of events was now crystal clear. “He did not escape alone. Those tracks are not from Troy’s boots—his have smooth soles. And they are not German-issue boots either. One of his men walked into the camp unseen and came in here, Arnheiter. You never heard him or knew he was here, and since the ropes are gone, it is almost certain that it was he, not Troy, who struck you. That man then cut the sergeant’s hands free and both of them departed the way he came.” For a second, he firmly put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “It is not your fault, and there is no blame attached to you. And had you turned and seen him, he would certainly have killed you at once. All right? _Alles klar_?”

          Arnheiter nodded, slowly. “ _Ja, mein Herr. Ich verstehe._ ”

          “ _Gut_. Now I need your help.”

          “My help? _Zu Befehl, mein Herr_.” _Anything you ask, that will I do…_

          “Yes. We must find another route to Al-Jawari at once, and we must still arrive there before the British reinforcements do. I am now quite certain that Troy and his patrol are waiting to ambush us along this narrow road we are on.” Dietrich moved swiftly to the side table where Arnheiter had been sitting, glancing about for the map that had been there less than an hour before. “The map… where is it?”

          “ _Die Landkarte_? It’s right there…” Forgetting his nervousness and his pounding headache, the acting clerk came over to the table as well, quickly searching. After a moment, he shook his head. “It is not here, Herr Hauptmann. It is gone.”

          “Are you certain?”

          The private nodded, the light from the lantern reflecting on his fair hair. “There is no doubt. It was here on the table in front of me. I know it was.” His face reddened as he realized that his concentration on the map was why he had not heard anything else.

          Dietrich clenched a fist. “Then Troy has taken it away with him. Obviously, he does not wish us to find a way out of the trap he has cleverly led us into.”

          Arnheiter took a deep breath, and then another. “You need the map…”

          “Yes. I am sure _Kompanie_ 2 has a copy as well, but they are miles away. The only way to get the map now is to recapture Troy and retrieve it from him. And I doubt we will find him. It was too carefully planned.”

          “There is another way, _Herr Hauptmann_...” Arnheiter began, his heart pounding in his chest, almost afraid to go on. It was a secret that he had told almost no one in years as he had found to his shame there were too many ways that he could be forced to use it. But it was he who had allowed the commandos to get away, and now he must do anything in his ability to remedy that lapse. “I will make the map for you again.”

          Dietrich turned to stare at his clerk. “What did you say?”

          Aware that he was giving a solemn promise, Arnheiter repeated it. “I will make the map again, _mein Herr_. Now.”

          This was mad, impossible, even insane. “How? How can you do this?”

          “Because I saw it, Herr Hauptmann. With my own eyes.”

          For a moment, Dietrich was staggered by the soldier’s simple assertion. He had heard of those who had such an ability, but it seemed almost unreal, fantastical. Feeling almost numb with astonishment, he realized at that moment that the young Thuringian was looking him straight in the eyes for the first time since his arrival a few weeks before. “What do you need in order to do it?”

          “Paper, of the same size. The pen and ink are already here. Pencils, dividers—I have those in my tent. More light will help.” He rubbed his aching head again, ruefully. “And if there is coffee… that will be useful too."

          The captain couldn’t suppress a sudden laugh. _He is proposing to do a miracle, and all he needs is mediocre coffee?_ “Wait here. I will send someone.”

          Already Arnheiter was starting to put himself into the state that he would have to be in to remember the entire map. Sounds around him began to fade from his awareness as he searched the steel file boxes for an out-of-date map which he could draw on the back of. He also found the four other maps that were contiguous to the missing one, which would provide reference points for him to use. He could hear the captain’s voice as he called out for someone to bring another lantern, and sent for the medic, Lt. Schäfer, as well. The sentry, Müller, was dispatched to go find the mess sergeant and produce some coffee, now that there was no further need to guard a prisoner.

          Presently, Dietrich returned to the tent, and with him was Konrad Genscher, who was Arnheiter’s friend and tentmate. He had brought an additional lantern, and Arnheiter’s battered tin paintbox from their tent, which also contained the dividers, straightedge, and drawing pencils, and his sketchbook. He set those down on the table, and quietly left.

          The side table with the radio proved to be too small and narrow, so Arnheiter spread out the four maps and the blank one on the large table in the center, and sat down in the chair facing Dietrich across the table. As he sharpened pencils and prepared to begin, the medic arrived, silently checked him over, and left him with a tin cup of water and several aspirin tablets.

          The captain asked in a low voice, “Will it disturb you if I remain here?”

          “No, _mein Herr_ , not at all,” Arnheiter replied. But those were the last words he spoke for over an hour as he began to draw. First he marked the main features that continued from the surrounding maps, and then slowly, line by line, began to recreate on the paper the map that was in his memory. Roads, landforms, streams, oases, towns, tiny settlements all had to be placed in the proper location and relationship to one another and the cardinal points of the map. At first, he made a few false starts, and had to make corrections, but the longer he worked, the surer his hand became.

 

          "But how, _mein Herr_?" Emil Bergmann frowned in bewilderment, talking privately with his commander outside the HQ tent. "How is that common _Landser_ doing this thing?"

          _Arnheiter may be a Landser_ , thought Dietrich, _but I don't think 'common' is the right word._ "I don't know," he admitted honestly, no less bewildered than his senior lieutenant. "I am watching him do it, Bergmann, and I don't know." His brows knitted as he sought the words for what he had been observing. "He is copying a picture, copying that map. Occasionally he pauses, looks at the picture again, and continues to draw. But the picture he is looking at is in his mind, in his memory."

          "What if there is an error in his memory, Herr Hauptmann?  Will we end up in the Qattara Depression or the great sand sea? Can we trust the copy he is making? Especially after the Americans knocked him out cold like a mackerel?”

          Forty-five minutes earlier, Dietrich himself might have asked the same question, but not now. "I believe we can. I myself recognize many features that are on it. Also, his hand does not hesitate the way yours or mine would. When we get another copy from the division headquarters and compare them, I expect the margin of error will be very small indeed." The only thing in his experience that was anything like this was listening to his sister Elisabeth—Liese— play her violin. She was a concert violinist and she played music the way that Arnheiter was drawing—as though she were listening to musical notes that only she could hear.

          "What are our orders?"

          "Either we must return to our original route if there is no other, or Arnheiter's map will reveal an alternative. In either case, we must be prepared to move in a few hours. So make sure that everything is ready and that the men have the chance to get some sleep. And say nothing to anyone of how this copy of the missing map was made. It is to be considered as classified information."

          " _Zu Befehl,"_ said Bergmann, and departed.

          Dietrich took a few more puffs of his cigarette and returned to the tent to see how things were progressing. _If Arnheiter can do this thing and we succeed, I will make him clerk and a corporal as well..._

          To the captain's surprise, the map no longer looked like a drawing—it looked like a map. Arnheiter had already drawn the shapes of the landforms in the area, but now he was adding short strokes around the edges of them so that the hills and ridges seemed to rise off the paper just as the streams, gullies and wadis receded. It was abundantly clear which areas were low and which were elevations.

          All at once, Dietrich realized something that he had noticed earlier but had not yet articulated to himself. The success or failure of their mission, as well as the fate of nearly a hundred men, depended on whether this map could show them a way to bypass the trap that the Allies had set for them to blunder into. Yet the man drawing the map, the man whom Köhler had diagnosed with a nervous condition, sat working diligently in relative calm. _His hands are not shaking, he shows no anxiety, and the only reason he is pale is that one of Troy's men knocked him out an hour ago. Even my standing here watching him does not make him nervous._

           At length, a few hours later, Arnheiter laid down the pencil and pen, and rubbed his tired eyes. He looked around the tent, momentarily disoriented—for him, it was like coming slowly to the surface after spending hours underwater.  He surveyed the map again, satisfied that it was as good as he could make it.  There was one corner, though, in the lower right, where he had been unable to recall many of the details. Apparently he had not seen or looked at that part of the original map. He looked up and met Dietrich’s eyes, watching him quietly across the table. “ _Herr Hauptmann,_ ” he said, suddenly aware of his own exhaustion, “There is the map. That’s all I can remember; but there is this one corner that’s missing. I must have not seen it clearly.” He picked up the pen again, dipped it, and signed his own initials on the lower-left corner. Unlike the political posters he had painted in his youth to please—or appease—the local _Gauleiter,_ this was work he was proud to put his name to. Then he handed his work to his captain, feeling as spent as if he’d run half a marathon.

          Dietrich took the map, and laid it down once more on the same table, facing right-side up to him instead of upside-down. It was astonishing in the level of detail that it contained—no mere sketch, this. What’s more, he could remember looking at that same map only that morning—printed and not hand-drawn. But for all intents and purposes, it was the same map. _Extraordinary…._ “It is not a serious problem,” he said. “That area is far to the southeast of our position, and so not necessary for our current circumstances.”

          Arnheiter, for his own part,  was desperately curious to know if the map would show what they needed—another way to approach Al-Jawari while staying out of the trap the Rats had maneuvered them into.  “Will it help, _mein Herr_?”

          “Very likely,” the captain answered. “I will take this at once and see what we may do. This is very well done, Corporal Arnheiter.”

          The acting clerk looked up, sharply, about to demur. “But, _mein Herr_ , I am only an _Obersoldat_ … I am not a _Gefreiter_ —”

          “If we are successful tomorrow, I will make you one.” Dietrich wrote a brief message on a slip of paper. “Here, go now and sleep. The communications truck will be a good place. I’ve written this note to Bauer and Genscher, not to awaken you until daylight. But we will be moving out long before then.” Another thought crossed his mind.  “I do have one question for you, however.”

          “Yes, _mein Herr_?”

          “Two weeks ago, a week after you had arrived, I asked you what I ask all new men—if you had any particular abilities that may not be mentioned in your official service record. And you said you knew nothing special, that you were merely a _Landser_ , a common soldier. Why did you say nothing of this talent for drawing?”

          Arnheiter sighed, a rueful expression in his eyes. “Because my _Onkel_ Helmut always says I am very good at many things which are of no use to anybody. He said it when I won second place in the school’s chess tournament, and he said it again after I won first prize in our school art show in my last year.” He picked up the sketchbook and offered it to the captain to look through. “Here. These are from the last two months, if you wish to see, _mein Herr_.”

          “Why would he say such a thing? These are very good…” The captain did not have time to peruse each of the drawings, but even the few that he glanced at were remarkably well done. And the watercolor painting of a sunset over the Mediterranean was just as he had seen it himself many times over.

          “He is a kind man, and a good uncle, but he has a very practical mind. When I won the award, he said that it was very good and they were proud of me. But I would soon be a man, and no longer a schoolboy. He said that I must learn a useful trade, and that pretty pictures don’t buy bread.” Arnheiter could hear that in his mind as if his father’s elder brother had said it only yesterday and not four years earlier.

          _Then your uncle Helmut is a fool,_ Dietrich thought to himself. _Has he never heard of fine art?_  But he did not say so to the boy’s face. “You should keep working at this, Arnheiter,” he said, handing back the sketchbook. “When the war is over, you may find one day that it is very useful indeed. And I assure you that beautiful paintings can buy much more than bread.”

<<<<<>>>>>

          Once they had slipped out of the Germans’ temporary camp the same way Hitch had sneaked in, Troy and Hitch uncovered the jeep where it had been hidden, and headed back for their own position with all speed.

          “I was following that column the whole day…” Hitch asked, when they stopped briefly for water.

          “Nope, I didn’t see you myself.” Then Troy grinned.  “I sure saw them watching you, though. There was this lieutenant who had field glasses on you a couple times an hour.”

          “Pick up anything interesting?”

          Troy shook his head. “Not much. All I got was bored and sunburned. The only useful thing I found out is that Dietrich’s left arm is no good. I noticed he was kind of doing everything one-handed.”

          “Huh.” Hitch put the radiator cap back on after refilling it, and their canteens as well. “Oh, yeah, Sarge,” he asked, curious. “How come you wanted me to go easy on that guy?”

          “One, he was unarmed; two, he’s no threat—he’s a clerk; and three, he gave me his own water twice today. It was him who was driving the patrol car.” Troy rubbed the back of his neck.  Being tied up with his arms behind him all day had made him stiff.  “Oh, and I also know that they didn’t find the transmitter I gave them,” he said with a quick smile, “and that Moffitt’s friends in that village gave Dietrich the information that we supplied for them. All according to plan.”

          “Well, Sarge, looks like you had a successful day.”

          “Yeah. Let’s hope Moffitt and Tully had a more exciting one.”

          “Right. I should let ‘em know we’re on the way.” He pulled up the antenna, and pressed the microphone button. “Will Scarlet to Little John, come in.”

          “Little John. Did you succeed in freeing Robin Hood from durance vile?” came Moffitt’s voice, chuckling.

          “Yep. Piece of cake. Never even saw the Sheriff, just one of his evil minions. Headed back to Sherwood Forest now.”

          “Meet us at dawn by the Gallows Oak,” said Tully from the speaker.

          “Will do, Friar. Over and out.”

          “Over and out.”

          Troy was shaking his head, laughing. “You guys are sure havin’ fun with that Errol Flynn movie, aren’t you?”

         

          Friedrich Arnheiter moved through the very temporary camp, looking for the radio truck.  There were no tents set up at all now except for the ones for headquarters, the medic, and the latrines. As a result, men were simply rolled up in a blanket beside or inside their vehicles attempting to catch a few hours’ sleep before the exigencies of combat forced them to be awake and underway once more. He paused a moment to look upwards, as he often did, and be overcome with delight at the vastness of the heavens filled with the autumn stars, but he was too exhausted to appreciate the celestial beauty for long.

          As he walked through the camp, he finally found the truck by the faint light that was visible around the edges of the canvas that covered it. He gratefully climbed into the truck, was greeted by his friends and was sleeping the sleep of the just within minutes.

 

          Meanwhile, in the headquarters tent, Dietrich and his three lieutenants—Bergmann, Schmidt, and Ehrle— were having a council of war by lamplight around the table.  The fourth of Dietrich’s lieutenants, Walter Brandt, was in charge of the men remaining at the main camp some miles distant.

          Schmidt was poring over the map spread out there. “This doesn’t look like the printed ones, _mein Herr_. But you said that young _Soldat_ …”

          “Yes,” said Dietrich lightly as if it were nothing important. “The commandos took the original map, but we are fortunate that the new clerk had made a copy of it. So, now we must plan. The route that we were ‘given’ by the friendly villagers goes through this narrow valley, which they seem to have neglected to tell us about.” Dietrich traced the road they were currently on with one finger. “Gentlemen, we now know this route is a trap. We were maneuvered into taking it by the band of commandos, I believe. They paid the Arabs to tell us about it, and their leader attached a transmitter to the underside of one of the halftracks so that they can be aware of our position at all times.”

          “That _Schweinhund_ …” muttered Bergmann, angered.

          “And, knowing something of their tactics, I expect that they are waiting at the narrowest point to ambush the entire column.”

          The most junior of the lieutenants, Wilhelm Ehrle, frowned in consternation. “How is that possible, _mein Herr_? There are only four of them in two small vehicles…”

          “I suspect Troy’s men will have spent the night planting explosives, _Oberleutnant_. Also, they are much more maneuverable despite their small numbers. They are a very small force, but their attacks are highly effective due to their courage and speed.”

          “What are you planning, _mein Herr_?” Bergmann asked, shrewdly eyeing the hand-drawn map.

          Dietrich allowed himself a sigh. This was the bad part. “I dislike this idea, but we shall have to send a small portion of our force into that trap. Because the commandos are using that transmitter signal to track us, they believe that we are following the little crumbs they left for us, like Hansel and Gretel. It is imperative that they continue to believe it. If that signal ceases, or moves to another place, they will know that we have found out their intentions, and will move at once to attack us elsewhere.”

          “That one halftrack needs to stay on that route, then.”

          “Yes. And another as well, to defend it. Believing that their plan has succeeded, then they will remain in their position to lie in wait for us.”

          Schmidt frowned. “With all respect, _Herr Hauptmann_ , I don’t like sending them to be uselessly sacrificed…”

          “I quite agree.” Dietrich nodded.  “Consider this, however—if these two halftracks are well-armed and prepared for the attack, it may be possible for them to overpower the Rat Patrol and possibly even capture them if their jeeps are disabled. The force we send will have not only heavier artillery, but also the advantage of surprise. They do not know that we are aware of their intentions and their location.” He tapped the map, thinking. “Even destroying their mobility for the present would take them out of the struggle to take and keep Al-Jawari and control the overland road to Derna. By the time they would be able to re-engage us, the town will be already in our hands.” He looked around the table at the three lieutenants under his command. “Is that not a chance worth taking?”

          “To eliminate or capture the Rat Patrol?” said Bergmann. “Certainly it is. Do you think it really can be done?”

          _Is it likely? No. I know that, even if they don’t. But possible?_ “Yes. They will not expect us to know about their planned ambush or be prepared to meet it. The advantage of surprise will be with our men, not theirs.”

          Satisfied that the sixteen men manning the two halftracks would not simply be thrown to the lions for no purpose, the three junior officers were hopeful. “What of us? Where are we going, _mein Herr_?”

          “That,” said Dietrich, “is what we are here to determine.” His orderly entered the tent then, bringing coffee for the four officers.

          Emil Bergmann eyed his captain, knowing that a plan already existed in the younger man’s agile mind. Not for nothing was Hans Dietrich the youngest captain in the 3rd Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion. 

          “It is apparent to me,” Dietrich went on, “that we have three avenues open to us. We can double back onto the route we were originally on, and drive most of the night to make up lost time; we can take the bait that was dangled in front of us and take this shorter route and face the ambush prepared for us; or, thirdly, we can find another route to reach Al-Jawari before the British 7th Armoured can arrive to defend it.”

          “And that is what you intend, is it not?” Bergmann recognized that in the captain’s tone of voice.

          Dietrich nodded. “Yes. The first two choices will cause us to lose too much time. As I see it, our only chance to arrive at Al-Jawari in time to support _Kompanie_ 2 is this.” He pointed to the map once more. “If we change course here,” he indicated a spot not far from their current position, “we can turn south without having to retrace our movements from earlier today.” _And that is what the map gave me that I did not know before… a way that will take us southward out of these ravines. _Following that, we can skirt this whole region of terrain by going through open country and coming up to the rear of this location. We and _Kompanie_ 2 will be closing on the Australians’ position from opposite directions.”

          “A pincer attack,” said Schmidt slowly, bending lower to get a better look for himself.

          “If all goes well, yes.”

          Schmidt looked up at his commander, a light in his eyes. “It is wonderful, _mein Herr_ … wonderful.”

          “One hopes that it will be. Bergmann, please bring the crews of the two halftracks to me, along with Sergeant Jahnke.”

          Twenty minutes later, Dietrich was facing a group of fifteen men gathered in front of the headquarters tent. “You men are going on a dangerous but very important mission. A group of commandos attached to the Long Range Desert Group—we have encountered them before—has prepared a trap for us in a narrow defile. Now that we know their plans, we can evade their ambush. But your job will be to spring that trap. They will be waiting for us, intending to disable the entire column with grenades, anti-tank guns and rocket launchers. They think that we will be surprised. We will surprise them instead because you will be prepared for them. Destroy or disable their vehicles if possible; hold them there as long as you can. But do not regard them lightly; even outnumbered and outgunned, they are a formidable adversary.” 

* * *

 

[1] Plattdütsch: ‘Do they think we’re stupid?’ _Doof_ rhymes with ‘loaf’; and Platt usually replaces _das_ and _daß_ with _‘dat’,_ which serves for both.


	5. Under Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment of truth has arrived, for both the Germans and the Rat Patrol. Who will reach Al-Jawari first, and who will be able to hold it?

          "Fritz, wake up," said Rudi Hartmann, "Here you are, there's tea." He was holding a steaming mug and being careful not to spill it due to the motion of the truck. " _Wie geht’s dir_?" They had saved him some of the pre-dawn tea and poured it into a Thermos bottle[1] to stay hot.

          Arnheiter sat up, rubbing his eyes. His headache was mostly gone. Rolled into a blanket like a sausage, he had slept for six hours on the floor of the radio truck, and had not even stirred when the column had gotten underway shortly after three in the morning. Yawning, he cautiously ran his left hand through his tousled hair, grimacing a little. "Better, I think," he said and took the mug of tea from his friend. " _Danke_."

          "Hmm." Hartmann didn't sound convinced. Now that it was daylight, he frowned. "Are you sure?"

          The younger man cupped the mug of tea in his hands and drank of it, gratefully. " _Ja_ , I think so. I don't feel bad. Why are you making a fuss, Rudi?"

          Hartmann grinned and handed him a metal dish with warmed-up tinned rations consisting of beef, carrots and potatoes. There were many variants of the German military meat-and-vegetables ration, but only one included carrots—and it was Arnheiter’s favorite. “Here, we saved you the one with the carrots.” The food had been hot earlier, but he and Bauer had not wanted to wake Arnheiter yet. "And if you're feeling all right, the captain wants you to drive again.”

          “He does? _Wirklich?”_ That was gratifying to hear.  He had still had a lingering thought that the captain might now doubt his ability to fight because he had inadvertently let the American prisoner get away.

          “Yes. Genscher's driving him now because _Herr Hauptmann_ and Schäfer both told us to let you sleep until daylight. So, finish that and your tea, and I'll pass the word you're all right. Then you and Konrad can trade places at the next water stop.”

          “ _Das ist gut_ ,” Arnheiter said, eating a little.  No one would call it delectable, but it was definitely better than some of the other tinned meals they were issued. “So, where are we? What’s happening?” He pulled the canvas aside a little and peered outside. He nearly fell over in his surprise, sloshing tea onto his trousers. “ _Donnerwetter! Wo zum Teufel sind wir jetzt…?! **[2]**_ ” Instead of the ridges and terrain they had been in the last time he’d been awake, they were now making tracks through open desert under a wide sky.

          Bauer and Hartmann both burst out laughing. Wolf Bauer thumped the young private on the shoulder. “My boy, it’s what we call ‘doing a Rommel’—heading far out into the desert and then coming up behind them where they don’t expect us. Works every time.”

          “Where’s _Herr Hauptmann_?”

          “Up there,” said Hartmann proudly, pointing to the head of the column, now invisible in its own dust cloud. “Our captain, he leads from the front.”

 

          Tully Pettigrew was making sure his bazooka was ready for action. He was singing.         

She'll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes,  
She'll be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes—  
She'll be coming ‘round the mountain,  
She'll be coming ‘round the mountain,  
She'll be coming ‘round the mountain  
When she comes…

She'll be driving six white horses when she comes,  
She'll be driving six white horses when she comes—  
She'll be driving six white horses,  
She'll be driving six white horses,  
She'll be driving six white horses…

          “She who?” inquired Moffitt.

          “Dunno,” replied his driver with a chuckle.  “The song doesn’t say.”

          Everything was ready and in place; they had planted explosives in a number of places calculated to trigger a landslide big enough to block the exit from the gorge. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

 

          When the column stopped briefly for water, Konrad Genscher came sprinting back to the communications truck. “ _Prima!”_ he said, glad to see his friend and tentmate prepared to trade places with him. They shook hands warmly, not stating the obvious—there was no way to know if both of them would survive the day.  Konrad reminded him to put on a helmet in place of his cloth cap, and he did so. “Take good care of him, _Junge_ ,” said Hartmann as Arnheiter ran off to the head of the column. “ _Hauptmann_ Dietrich’s the best captain in the whole division…”

          _I know that well…_ “Certainly I will.”

         Arnheiter loped forward past the others, most of whose names he knew now from having read and reread all the personnel cards in the file. There was Steinitz the shoemaker from Kassel, and Stohlmann the erstwhile music teacher from Leipzig, who had three children; Klaus Winkel from Mecklenburg waved hello to him and shouted an enthusiastic “Hoi, hoi, hoi!” as he passed. _All of these men know our captain is in my hands…_ he thought, momentarily appalled by that realization. _It’s up to me that he is safe and sound today. _He hated to think of it, but he had been in France, and he was not a new recruit—he knew that he was seeing some of the men he greeted this morning for the last time, perhaps many of them if the day went badly.  _I must do only one thing,_ he thought over and over. _He leads from the front, so I must go where he orders and keep him safe. Our offensive won’t fail because of me…_

          He found the patrol car with no difficulty, easily recognizing the captain standing in the passenger side with his field glasses. “Excellent,” Dietrich said as Arnheiter came up and stiffly saluted.  “You are well?”

          “Yes, sir. And yourself, _mein Herr_?” asked his clerk.

          The captain nodded. “I also. Come, we have an urgent engagement to meet, and we are late.” He smiled by way of encouragement. Having read Shakespeare in his student days, he could not help remembering a sentence that had impressed him years ago: _And how Thou pleasest, God, dispose the day…_

          For the next hours, they simply covered as much ground as possible at the best speed the column could make. As they drew nearer to Al-Jawari, clouds of roiling dust told them that the fighting had already begun. Arnheiter’s heart was pounding in his chest as he drove the _Kübelwagen_ forward, remembering the paintings he’d loved in his boyhood storybooks, of cavalry charges and armored knights with brightly colored shields and banners.

_Wrong kind of armor_ , he thought as they drew near enough to hear the guns. And a little desert-yellow _Kübelwagen_ was no mighty destrier pawing the earth, but it would just have to do… He was glad to have come to Africa, for he had learned that there were still worthy knights for a man to follow to the world’s end—one, at least, he knew, even if there were no others left in these dark days.

 

          Troy stood atop a rock outcropping with his field glasses, looking in the direction that the German column would be coming from, and was gratified to see that his stratagem had worked. The signal from the radio transmitter was still coming loud and clear, so he knew Dietrich’s men had never found the device.  _Good. We can track them all the way in…_

          He leaped down and ran to join the rest of his patrol.  “They’re on the way,” he told them. “I can see the dust cloud from here.”

 

          From where they were, Dietrich could see the situation and his heart sank within him. _Wir sind zu spät gekommen_ … They were too late, at least too late to take the town of Al-Jawari without a fight. Their brother company, _Kompanie_ 2, was already engaged with the Australians; if _Kompanie_ 4 had arrived earlier, the two companies together might have pushed the defenders out, but not now. _Damn you, Troy,_ the captain couldn’t help thinking. _This is your doing. But we made it here at last, in spite of your subterfuge… _Where to go now? Where was the enemy’s weak point? He gestured to Arnheiter at the wheel and motioned him to drive up onto slightly higher ground. Once he had a better view, it was clear what needed to be done. In the distance, he could see that a contingent was approaching from the British lines. _If we make good speed, our column can block them and hold them off from the town._ He pointed toward the approaching British battalion with their tanks.

          Friedrich Arnheiter saw the direction the captain pointed, signaled his understanding, and stomped on the gas pedal, sending them rushing forward into the fight. The halftracks and tanks were right behind them. As he drove through clouds of dust, he imagined he could hear men singing.

* * *

 [1] Invented and named by two German glassblowers in the early 1900s, as a modification of James Dewar’s vacuum flask.

“[2] Thunder! Where in hell are we now?!”


	6. After the Battle

**23 October 1941**

          “What happened then?” Martin Köhler asked, applying a fresh dressing to the wound on his friend’s back. A piece of flying shrapnel had sliced a gash there. Luckily, it was not a deep one, and it had been closed by sutures.

          Hans Dietrich sighed. “It was sheer chaos.”

          “Is there any battle which isn’t?”

          “Sometimes,” the Panzer captain replied soberly. “But this one turned into a _mêlée_ … we moved to engage the British who were arriving on the scene—it was a company of the 7th Armoured, but it was a full company, whereas we were under strength, having sent two halftracks and fifteen men to engage Troy’s commandos.”

          “Go on…”

          “And then another contingent came out of nowhere and engaged us from the rear, and we were partly cut off.  Suddenly, they were all around us, and we were under fire from all sides. Arnheiter started to turn to the right, and kept turning right over and over for several minutes. I don’t know why he did that—I never ordered him to.”

          Köhler looked up. “You don’t know?”

          “No.”

          “Your lieutenant saw it happening. Your driver kept turning right to put his own body between you and the enemy. He was shielding you, Hans, keeping you on the inside of the curve and himself on the outside.” _And the rest of your men thought he was timid…_ “When did he get hit?”

          “I didn’t see it happen. Our tanks were firing back at them; Bergmann and the four halftracks he had drove off some of the Highlanders and made a way for us to retreat, I and the other men and vehicles that were also cut off. Then I looked down at Arnheiter, and his right arm and side were covered in blood.” Once they had made it out of the middle of the skirmish, into a relatively sheltered position, Dietrich had moved to help his clerk. “I had to shake him before he would stop the car. I don’t think he was aware he was wounded...”

           _“Halt, halt!” the captain shouted over the noise, shaking the man at the wheel by the shoulder. “Warte nur…” Once the car was stopped, Dietrich got down from where he was standing and got a look at his driver’s right arm where blood was flowing from a deep wound in the upper arm. Folding his own handkerchief into a thick square, he pressed it onto the wound, and ordered the fair-haired clerk, “Halte das fest!” Arnheiter had obeyed, holding the cloth tightly over the bleeding wound, clear blue eyes fixed on the officer’s face. Dietrich thought for a few seconds, There has to be something here…and then remembered. From his inner pocket, he pulled out the grey fabric square that he’d been using earlier as a sling for his strained left shoulder. Quickly he rolled it into a thick strap and tied it firmly around the younger man’s arm, hoping to stop the bleeding…_

          “He was still driving when you regrouped, I heard.”

          The captain nodded. “Yes. After I bound his arm, I tried to take over and drive, but he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—let go of the wheel. So he drove. Once we got some distance, one of the radiomen, Konrad Genscher, came running and he took over driving once he helped me get Arnheiter into the back.” He looked Martin Köhler in the eyes. “How is he?”

          “Not as bad as you had feared, Hans. He won’t lose his arm, and you should get him back in ten days or so.” The battalion doctor smiled. “It’s an ugly flesh wound, but he was lucky. The bone isn’t fractured, and no major blood vessels were hit. He’ll have an impressive scar, but that should be all.”

          “How?” It had certainly looked worse than that at the time.

          “As far as I can tell, the bullet that struck him was either a ricochet, or it was nearly at its extreme range. At any rate, it came from behind him, probably as he was turning the car; it entered the tricep, glanced off the arm bone, and lodged in the bicep muscle. It scraped the cortex—the surface, that is—of the humerus, but nothing worse. There is no fracture of the humeral shaft, and no loose fragments. We took X-ray films to be certain; you can see it if you like.” Köhler turned over an instrument in his hands, thoughtfully. “Did you observe any signs of the anxiety we talked about?”

          _That was the other mystery_ , thought Dietrich. “The night before, yes, when he thought that he was to blame for the prisoner’s escape.  But in the battlefield, none. It was his first experience of combat, but he charged into that bedlam as though he’d done it a hundred times.”

          The doctor nodded.  “Well, I’ve said before that a man’s imagination will carry him into places that his good sense would never go.”

          Dietrich frowned. “Imagination? I don’t follow you, Martin.”

          “Do you know what he said as we were giving him the ether, before I operated?”

          “No. What did he say?”

          “He looked up at me and asked, fearful, “Is _Herr Hauptmann_ safe?” I told him yes, that you were quite all right. Then he smiled and let us give him the ether, saying, ‘Then I was a good _Schildknecht **[1]**_ , wasn’t I?’

          “A _Schildknecht_?” Dietrich stared at his friend in utter disbelief. A _Schildknecht_ was a knight’s faithful servant, his armor-bearer, his squire… There was no such thing anymore, nor had there been in four hundred years. “He didn’t think…”

          “He did, and he does. Oh, I don’t mean he really thinks this is 1520, of course. But that is how he sees himself. Which means he sees you as the brave and noble knight whom it is his honor to serve, keeping your armor in good order, your sword sharpened and your warhorse shod.” He helped Dietrich put his shirt back on. “To him, it matters not that your horsepower is on wheels instead of hooves. He put his own body between you and your enemies and he refused to be treated until he knew you were all right—well, mostly. This faithful hound seems to have followed you home, Hans—and if I were you, I’d keep him.” He smiled at his own joke, and then grew sober again. “Now for the bad news, I’m afraid.”

          “How many have we lost?”

          “Five, I’m afraid.” Köhler reached for a list and read off their names. “Those are the four enlisted men, but this morning your lieutenant Ehrle passed as well. I’m sorry, we did our best but…”

          “You always do, Martin.” Those five, plus the six that didn’t survive from Sergeant Jahnke’s encounter with the Rat Patrol, meant that this attempt to take Al-Jawari had cost him eleven good men. And there were nine in all who were still under treatment in this battalion hospital. “Thank you, and thank your staff. I want to see the ones who are well enough to be visited.”

          “I knew you would. Your driver, that Bavarian fellow, is sitting with Arnheiter…”

          This was no surprise—Dietrich already knew that was Genscher’s reason for volunteering to drive him to battalion headquarters that day. “As I expected. They are good friends.”

          “And of the other eight, five are conscious and able to see visitors. Lange, Ohlmann and Winkler are still in serious or critical condition. Here, the orderly will show you in.”

          “Very well.”

          “Oh, and something else—I’ve put in for a commendation for your combat medic. Schäfer did very well; he was prompt in using carbolic acid on all the men who had wounds, including you, and followed it with sulfanilamide powder. Not one of them has a serious wound sepsis.  A few of them do have some infection, including Arnheiter, but none are severe. They should all make a good recovery.”

 

          “We must’ve made Dietrich mad, Sarge… they were gunning for us, those Krauts,” Tully Pettigrew remarked resentfully as Troy and the others came to visit him in the British field hospital near their current home base at the Siwa oasis. “They weren’t surprised at all—not one little bit.” His left thigh was sutured and bandaged, now that the surgeons had removed the bullet that had struck him in the leg. “And they knew right where we were, too.”

          “Yeah. I noticed that.” Troy scowled.  It had seemed as if all was going according to plan… until everything went sideways, and then some. They had seen the dust cloud suggesting the approaching German column was near, and then as the vehicles got closer, he saw that Dietrich had not fallen for their ruse after all.  Instead of a dozen tanks and almost as many halftracks, what rumbled into their trap was a pair of halftracks mounted with the largest guns their weight could carry, and they were towing chains and debris behind them to raise dust. Apparently they’d also had a briefing on where the Rats themselves were likely to be.  Those guns had been aimed directly at the tops of the surrounding ridge, right where anyone would have to park wheeled vehicles.  The Rats had taken out one of the halftracks and its crew with grenades and the bazooka, but the commander of the German patrol had targeted their jeeps and blown one of them to pieces. Fortunately, none of them were in that jeep at the time. After Tully was shot, they had retreated from the field in the one remaining jeep.

          Moffitt sighed. He was glad that Tully was not more seriously wounded, but he had been somewhat worried all along that the Germans were not quite as dim-witted as Troy had seemed to think they were. He had, however, kept his own counsel rather than argue with Troy only a month after he had joined the patrol himself. “It looks as though they found that transmitter, Troy. And perhaps the village headman said or did something that made Dietrich get suspicious. I know that they would do what they promised to do, but something must have tipped him off.”

          “What I can’t figure out,” said Hitchcock, pouring a cup of water and giving it to Tully, “is how they got around us without us seeing them. Sarge made off with their map of this whole area. That map covers about a fifty-mile radius.”

          “The Germans,” said Moffitt lightly, “have developed bureaucracy to a fine art. There are probably duplicates or triplicates of all of those maps.”

          Tully was clearly feverish, as well as groggy from the morphine, so the other three didn’t stay long. Hitch went back to their tent, and Troy and Moffitt wandered over to the NCOs club for a beer, or two, or something stronger. “Don’t know when I’ve had a raid go that badly,” the American groused as they walked. “Guess it’s not as bad as it could’ve been—we’re all still here and in one piece.” It hadn’t been all that long since Cotter had been killed on another raid where all hell had broken loose.

          “There is that,” Moffitt agreed. “I must say, though—”

          “Yeah? I know, you told me so…”

          “No,” the English sergeant demurred. “It’s only that we’ve gotten in the habit of assuming Jerry is stupid and lacking initiative. I think we’d best stop assuming that, at least as long as we’re located in this district.”

 <<<<<>>>>> 

          Arnheiter was almost paralyzed with dread. He was being followed, he was certain. What devilment was Gebhardt up to now? He tensed every muscle, ready to duck, or block, or somehow evade what was about to happen to him, or land on him, or strike him in the face…

          “Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh…” a woman’s voice said as someone’s hands gently restrained his shoulders. “Wake up, Private, it’s all right.  Lie still, you’ll hurt yourself.”

          He opened his eyes as her touch and the sharp burning pain in his arm woke him at almost the same time. “Following me… don’t know where he is…” he mumbled, only half awake.

          “No, no one is following you. Look around, see? It’s the hospital.” She was right. He could see from where he lay that they were in a large tent, subdivided into smaller sections. “But ether and morphine sometimes bring on strange dreams and bad memories.  Here, have a bit of water.” She poured water into a small cup from a bottle beside the bed and held it for him, using her other arm to help him sit up slightly to drink it. “ _Ist das besser_?”

          “ _Ja_.” More alert now, Arnheiter was both embarrassed that someone had heard him dreaming and grateful that there was no one in the cot next to his. “ _Entschuldigung_ ,” he replied. “I didn’t mean to disturb anyone.”

          “It’s quite all right, you didn’t. But you were thrashing about and I was afraid you would injure yourself,” explained the nurse.  “You’re feverish,” she added. “Wait and I will come right back.”

          _Certainly I will wait,_  he thought, suddenly amused. _What else can I do?_ The nurse, who had tawny brown hair caught up in a twisted knot at the back on her neck, returned presently with a tiny envelope in her hand. She tore it open, and gave him the two small _Tabletten_ that were in it. “That will help both the pain and the fever,” she said.

          Dutifully, he took them from her and swallowed them with more of the water.  “What is your name?”

          “Brigitte,” she said. “Brigitte Kessel. And yours?”

          “Friedrich. _Meine Freunde nennen mich Fritz_.” _Meine Freunde_ , he said to himself, thinking of Konrad and Wolf and Rudi. _They’re the first Freunde I’ve had since the training camp._

          “Rest now,” said the nurse called Brigitte, briefly squeezing his uninjured arm before she left him.

<<<<<>>>>> 

          Dietrich had finished visiting and talking with all of his wounded men—those who were awake enough to talk to, at any rate—except one. The orderlies had hung sheeting or canvas tarpaulins between every pair of beds to muffle sounds so that the men had at least some degree of privacy and quiet.

          Arnheiter was awake, although not sitting up. Konrad Genscher was sitting on a canvas chair next to his cot, quietly reading aloud to him from a newspaper. A tan canvas messenger bag nearby was lying open and unzipped; it held a book of some kind, another newspaper, and Arnheiter’s sketchbook and paintbox. He had been lucky enough to be given a spot against one of the tent walls that had a window in it, so there was a little late-afternoon light coming in.

          “ _Du hast uns alle Angst gemacht,”_ said Konrad in a low voice, looking up from the _Münchner Zeitung_. “Don’t frighten us like that again, eh? But you were really a hero, _ein echter Held_ , you know? Doing that crazy turning-in-circles business…”

          “ _Quatsch_ ,” replied Arnheiter brusquely. “Nonsense, I am none. I was only trying to give _Herr Hauptmann_  a better shot.”

         

          Dietrich paused for a moment before pulling aside the canvas, so that they would not surmise that he had heard that last exchange. He then stepped through the ‘door’ into that section of the tent. “At ease, men, carry on,” he said at once, so that Genscher wouldn’t knock over the camp chair, nor would Arnheiter attempt to salute him.

          For the present, Arnheiter had this corner of the ward to himself—the bed next to him was either unoccupied or had recently been vacated by the previous occupant’s recovery or decease.  “ _Mein Herr_ ,” said the acting clerk, with a relieved smile. He knew the doctor had told him that the captain was all right, but he wasn’t quite willing to believe it without the evidence of his own eyes. “You are well, sir?”

          “For the most part, yes. There is a slight wound, but it is nothing serious.”

          Genscher stood up decorously, so as not to leave the captain standing while he himself occupied the only chair, and then departed to visit other comrades after grasping his friend firmly by the hand.  Dietrich took the chair once he had gone. “How is it with you, Arnheiter?”

          “ _Nicht zu schlecht, mein Herr_. Not too bad.” He was slightly flushed and his blue eyes had the odd glassy look in them that comes with fever.  His right arm was heavily bandaged from the elbow upward; the doctor had explained that due to infection, they had not yet sutured the wound closed, but were leaving it open at first, packed with sterile gauze and sulfa.

          “Very good.” He had had very nearly the same conversation with several other men in the last hour, and it was always awkward. Some officers could make jokes or take a light tone with their men in such situations, but he was not of that sort of temperament. “You did very well, Private,” he said. “I intend to mention your bravery under fire in my report.”

          “But—I only went where you told me to go, Herr Hauptmann.” _And I am not a brave man,_ Arnheiter thought to himself.

          “Still it was well done. Is there anything that you need, or anything I can have the staff here do for you?”

          Arnheiter shook his head after a moment’s thought. “No, sir. They are very good to us.” He frowned a little. “If I may ask a question?”

          “Certainly.”

          “How many have we lost, mein Herr?”

          “Eleven.” Too many; it was always too many.

          “Who were they?” the clerk inquired.

          “Oberleutnant Ehrle. Otto Ludwig, Uwe Gutermann, Jakob Lang…”

          “Corporal Ludwig… he’s from Regensburg. He’s Catholic, _mein Herr_ …”

          “Yes?” Dietrich replied, puzzled. He hadn’t known that.

          “His rosary should be in his pocket, or his tent. His wife Hilda will want to have it. And Lang—he has three children…he comes from Marburg an der Lahn.  Gutermann is from Giessen…he is not married, but his parents are still living…” he said. Even with the morphine, Arnheiter was recalling details about each of the men whom Dietrich mentioned as having fallen.

          “Arnheiter, the records are in camp. There is no need for you to remember them all,” the captain said. “Rest now.”

          “I don’t remember them all, mein Herr.  But I am trying to. I study the cards every morning.”

 

[1] German: the page or squire of a knight, who was responsible for his armor and his horse, from Middle High German _schilt_ 'shield' + _knecht_ 'boy', 'servant'.


	7. Onward and Upward

**1 November 1941**

          The "Wolf pack", once more reunited now that Arnheiter had returned from the battalion hospital, was celebrating in his and Genscher's tent. As usual on a Saturday night in camp, they were playing cards, but this night was different. Konrad Genscher had concocted a batch of date-and-melon wine, and that day had set up his small pot-still over a burner to distill the mildly alcoholic brew into something with a bit more kick to it.

          This resulting spirit was clear and fragrant with the essence of the original fruit that had gone into it. It was not a large quantity, but what there was of this _eau de vie_ was enough to go around with a tot or two for each of them. Wolf Bauer as the eldest of the group, took the first tot and sipped it, swirling the cup.  He nodded.  "Not bad, Genscher, not bad at all.  Whatever you did this time, write it down so you can do it again." He took the glass bottle, which had been liberated from the mess tent, poured out the next shot and handed it to Arnheiter, the youngest. "Join the club, Fritz!" He raised his glass and Konrad and Rudi followed suit.  “Your wound badge hasn’t arrived yet, but you’ve certainly earned one.”

          "You may not have shot anybody, but that was a fine bit of driving," commented Rudi Hartmann, who had been driving a tank at the time. "I didn't see it, but I heard about it."

          Arnheiter took the cup in his left hand, and sipped from it. The homebrew brandy warmed his throat and the gesture of Konrad’s making it for him warmed his heart. He was sitting on his own cot, and Hartmann was sitting on the end of it. A small fire crackled outside the tent, but a steel reflector directed the warmth of it inside. Nothing could be more unlike his unit in France than this tiny gathering of his friends to welcome him back from hospital and toast the awarding of his first wounds badge. This _Kameradschaft_ , this fellowship was not like anything so far in his military experience; the 29th in France had been nothing like this, even before Gebhardt had made him a target. _This is how Onkel Helmut said it was, when he was soldiering in the last war,_ he thought. The pain in his right arm was considerable, but it was greatly eased by the pleasure he felt among his friends.

          Wolf and Konrad were starting on another chorus of " _Wenn die bunten Fahnen wehen_ ," when they suddenly heard footsteps approaching the tent. Genscher hastily looked for a way to hide the bottle, but it was too late. "Gentlemen," said Hauptmann Dietrich from outside, "May I enter?" It was not a question.

          Arnheiter blushed like a strawberry and froze where he sat like a startled deer, wishing he could cover his face with his good hand, but Genscher rose to the occasion. He got up and opened the tent door, and bowed formally as he invited the captain to enter; all four men rose to their feet and saluted as Dietrich came in. “Please join us, _Herr Hauptmann._ We are welcoming our Fritz back home, and commemorating his first wounds badge.”

          “I see. I noticed an… interesting aroma as I passed by.”

          “Yes, sir!” To Arnheiter’s astonishment, Genscher said this with enthusiasm as though he had expected the captain to turn up all along. “It’s made from the last of those big melons we got at the oasis that day, along with some dates and honey to speed up the fermentation.” He picked up the glass bottle containing the last of the distilled spirit, poured it out, and offered it to Dietrich. “Would you care to join us, sir, in a toast?”

          The captain’s usually sober mien wavered slightly; to Arnheiter it looked as if he were making an effort to keep a straight face. “Very well,” he said gravely, accepting the metal cup. “To victory, and courage. Proost!” Prepared for the worst, he calmly raised the cup and sipped from it; to his great surprise, it was not only drinkable, but rather good—the fragrance and flavor of the melons had survived the process and were preserved in the liquor. _Well, it isn’t Doornkaat,_ he thought, _but for homemade schnapps, it’s not bad…not bad at all._

          The four enlisted men drank, as he did. Then Wolfgang Bauer rose and raised his cup. “To our lost friends,” he said, “and our new friend. May his first wound be his last.”

          Once the toast ended with the last of Genscher’s _eau de vie_ , Dietrich spoke again. “You all did very well in our last engagement. That was good work.” He turned to Arnheiter then. “ _Doktor_ Köhler’s report states that you are cleared for limited duty as of today. I shall expect you tomorrow in that case.”

          “ _Zu Befehl_ ,” said Arnheiter firmly. “I shall be there.”

          “Excellent. A letter arrived for you earlier in the week. I will send someone to bring it to you this evening.” He turned then to the Bavarian radioman. “Genscher, a word with you.” Dietrich motioned him outside the tent, pausing only to give a bemused glance to the tin cans hanging in the entrance to the tent.

          Konrad Genscher rose and followed the captain out. “ _Ja, mein Herr._ ”

          “I see that the rumors are correct,” Dietrich began, “and that you are in fact one of the sources of alcoholic spirits in this camp, though I doubt the only one.” His dark brows converged slightly in a frown.

          “Yes, sir.”

          “In one area I must commend you— it’s the first time the maker has invited me to share it instead of endeavoring to hide it, and it’s also the first time I wouldn’t mind a bit more,” the officer said, with his characteristic fleeting half-smile.  “It was very good. Having said that—be advised, Corporal, that as long as no one is intoxicated on duty or is rendered incapable of responding in an emergency, you may carry on with this hobby. But the first time your potion results in some dereliction of duty… _Verstehen Sie_?”

          Genscher nodded, serious. “ _Jawohl, mein Herr_.  This apparatus can produce only a small quantity, about half a liter. What I gave to you was the last of the batch, sir.”

          “ _Sehr gut. Guten Abend_ ,” Dietrich said as Genscher respectfully saluted him.

 

**The next morning:**

          Dietrich was alone in the headquarters tent, early on the second of November, preparing for whatever would face them that day. It was no news that the British were getting ready for a major offensive[1]; the only unknown factors were when and where. Looking at maps and intelligence reports, he had realized that the four companies comprising the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion would be forced to relocate in the immediate future. Staying where they were would probably mean being overrun.

          _Kompanie_ 4 was still recovering from the unsuccessful attempt to overtake Al-Jawari almost two weeks earlier. Those who had died had been buried, but the discouraging task still remained to write letters home to the families of the fallen men, and send back whatever personal effects could be found. He hadn't openly admitted it to himself, but it would be good to have his company clerk back from the hospital to assist him in it. He had stopped thinking of Friedrich Arnheiter as the ‘acting’ clerk, or _Schreiber_ , as soon as he had made the decision to promote him into the position permanently. There were still a few things that needed to be ironed out, but he did not anticipate any difficulties there.

          In fact, Dietrich was expecting the young Thuringian to arrive any moment.  He and three others of the wounded men had been brought back to the company yesterday afternoon by truck. That left three men still in the battalion hospital.

          There was a slight cough outside. "Private Arnheiter, reporting for duty, sir."

          " _Komm’n Sie herein_ ," Dietrich replied.

          The tent flap opened, and the fair-haired private entered and saluted. He had to salute left-handed because of having his wounded right arm in a sling, but otherwise he looked considerably better than he had in the battalion hospital.

          " _Guten Morgen_ , Arnheiter," Dietrich said, with a nod. "At ease. It is good to have you back." Truth to tell, he had missed the young man's presence the last several days. Arnheiter, being an introverted man by nature, was not given to useless chatter or prattle, and could work alongside his commander in the same tent for hours on end without saying a word, and yet somehow without needing to.  He had the knack of being able to anticipate what was needed without having to be told. In fact, the captain had not been consciously aware, until the clerk was wounded, that for the previous ten days his pen had never run out of ink and a cup of coffee had magically awaited him on his desk every morning.

          " _Guten Morgen, mein Herr_. Thank you."

          Dietrich looked at the stack of forms on the table that served as his desk in camp, and sighed. "How is your arm? Can you type?"

          "Yes, sir, I can." The younger man smiled, and then his demeanor grew sober as he saw the task awaiting them.

          _That was the wrong question_ , Dietrich thought to himself, knowing Arnheiter a little better now.  "Are you permitted to type?"

          "Yes, sir. I asked _Herr Doktor_ Köhler. He made a note of it."

          "Very well. We should begin by getting these letters written. And then take Genscher or Bauer with you and see about collecting these men’s belongings." In camp, the radiomen often doubled as administrative assistants if they were not needed in the radio hut.

          The clerk sat down in the other chair, turned the paper sideways, and began to write as Dietrich once more found the words to tell a middle-aged woman of her son's untimely death.

          After the eleven letters had been dictated, Dietrich turned his attention to other matters and began reading dispatches, while Arnheiter went to sit at the other table and began typing. He removed the arm sling to do this, but kept his right elbow against his side and in that way seemed able to type with little difficulty. After several minutes, he stopped short, and paused for a moment as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him. He turned around to face the captain.  “ _Entschuldigen Sie, mein Herr_ …” he said, excusing himself.

          “Yes?” Dietrich looked up. “ _Was ist los_?”

          “Nothing, sir.  But I have an idea… may I go and get something?”

          “Yes, certainly.” 

          The clerk nodded, saluted, and was gone, walking briskly. Several minutes passed before he returned carrying a stiff yellow envelope, and saluted once more. Dietrich eyed the envelope, intrigued. “So what do you have there, and what is your idea?”

          Arnheiter opened the envelope and pulled out a number of photographs.  _“Herr Hauptmann_ , would you wish to send pictures of those men to their families? I have some here.”

           The captain stared at the several photographs spread out on the table. They were all different; some were purely candid shots, while others were semi-posed as if the subjects knew their pictures were being taken. There was a photo of one of the tank crews, another of Genscher and Bauer in the radio truck, another taken while some of the men were playing football. “Did you take these? Why?”

          The young man’s face reddened with some embarrassment. “If I am to be the clerk, then I should know the name of every man in _Kompanie 4_. Peter Altmann offered to lend me his camera if I paid him for the film, and I did. He was a chemist’s assistant before the war, and he and I developed the pictures together after he showed me how. The mess sergeant let us use the back of the kitchen tent to make into a darkroom. I have pictures here of over half of our company.”

          Dietrich nodded, thoughtful. “It is an excellent idea, Arnheiter. When you have typed the letters, then find a photograph of each of the men to include with it. After that, go and collect their belongings.”

         

          By midday, the letters and packages had been prepared, and were ready to be taken to the battalion headquarters to be mailed back to the Continent.  Shortly after that, the company medic, Schäfer, arrived with a twist of paper which he gave to Arnheiter, along with a cup of water.  “ _Prosit_!” he teased as the clerk untwisted the paper containing his next dose of sulfa tablets.

          Arnheiter couldn’t very well retort, “oh, shut up..” to a lieutenant, but he rolled his eyes before downing the tablets and the water. He did, however, tease Schäfer back by returning the cup with a formal bow.

         

          After both Dietrich and Arnheiter had gone separately to the mess tent for the midday meal, it was early afternoon.  There was no further pressing business for the clerk to handle.  Dietrich observed him silently from his own desk as Arnheiter did what had apparently become a routine for him. He dusted the typewriter keys with a soft brush, put its cover on, took out the set of personnel cards and swiftly sorted them into alphabetical order, removing the cards of the men who had been killed and putting them into a separate file.

          _He does good work,_ Dietrich mused. _But before we continue any further, and before I promote him, there are things I need to know…_ But there was no good way, and certainly no official way, to bring those things to light.  _This discussion must be entirely ‘off the record’, and well out of anyone’s hearing,_ he thought to himself. Aloud he said, “Arnheiter?”

          “ _Herr Hauptmann_?” The clerk turned at once, attentive.

          “ _Nehmen wir jetzt Pause,”_ Dietrich said, reaching for the cigarettes in his pocket. “I think both you and I could do with a respite.” He inclined his head toward the entrance of the tent and got up to head outside. 

          Arnheiter nodded. “ _Sehr vielen Dank, mein Herr,”_ and followed the officer into the out-of-doors. Slightly mystified, he went with the captain, walking a short distance until they topped a rise from which one could see the Mediterranean sparkling in the distance.

          “One should enjoy this view while we still have it,” Dietrich said quietly. “Soon we must relocate farther inland, and prepare for a great deal of action.”

          “Yes, sir.”

          “Be at ease, if you wish,” the officer continued, indicating a large rock which was the reason he’d selected this particular spot. At his gesture, Arnheiter perched himself on one edge of the rock, resting his wounded arm on  his knee, and waited.  Dietrich turned toward him and went on. “It is my intention to make you officially company clerk, and to promote you to _Gefreiter_ as well since you are past the scheduled time period for such a promotion. Before I take those actions, however, and before we are engaged in repelling the British offensive which is even now in preparation, there are some things that I must know.”

          Arnheiter felt his hands and face grow cold as his heart sank within him. Was it possible that somehow, he had been so happy here that he’d let himself be careless? For years he had managed to ‘play the game’, in the _Hitler-Jugend_ , in school, in the training camp, and in the _Heere—_ not to allow anyone to guess at his deep-seated hatred for the Party, everything it stood for, and what they had done _._ Yet, Wolf Bauer was the most openly-dissenting man he’d ever met, and no one in the company seemed to mind. He looked down at his own boots and did not meet his officer’s eyes. “Yes, _mein Herr_. Which things?”

          “I want you to tell me, Arnheiter, why you are here and not in France. And I want to know who beat you so severely before you were transferred. Yes, I know about that. Herr Doktor Köhler informed me.”

          The clerk looked up then, apprehension in his clear blue eyes.  He had hoped, perhaps, that he would be able to simply continue in this company, this unit, and never have to tell anyone what had happened in his previous one. Clearly, the captain was not going to let him.  “Must I, _Herr Hauptmann?_ ”

          “Yes. You must,” Dietrich repeated, not unkindly.  “And then we shall leave it behind and it need never be spoken of again. But do not tell me any tales—no _Märchen_ about delivering messages by bicycle. I know that the bicycle story is not the truth.”  He was expecting the young man to react with the nervousness or anxiety that he had noticed before, but he didn’t. The clerk looked down and away, red-faced with shame. “I have read your transfer papers. I know that your battalion adjutant filled them out at three-thirty in the morning. He made sure to have you sent out of your battalion in the middle of the night. Why did he do that? _Sie können mir alles erzählen,_ ” he added quietly. “Tell me what happened, Arnheiter.  It will go no further. If you are going to be my clerk, we must trust one another completely.”

          “He was protecting me,” Arnheiter said slowly, still not looking up. “ _Hauptmann_ Becker was protecting me.”

          Dietrich nodded. “Ah. That is what I suspected.” Troy had suggested that Arnheiter’s previous commander had wanted to get rid of him, but the captain’s instincts had led him in a different direction. “What was he protecting you from?” He had overheard some of the men joking that the fair-haired youth must have aroused the ire of some woman’s jealous husband, but Dietrich hadn’t believed that for a minute. Anyone as shy as this young man would not be larking about with married women, he felt certain.

          Looking out toward the sea, Arnheiter finally answered. “His name is Oskar Gebhardt. _Feldwebel_ Gebhardt,” he said in a distant tone as though he were describing a book he had read once or something that had happened to someone else altogether.

          _Now we are getting somewhere, perhaps._ “He is the one who struck you?”

          “ _Ja, mein Herr._ Many times. What you saw when I came was only the last time.”

          “What other things did he do?”

          Slowly, reluctantly, Arnheiter began to explain about the ball bearings strewn around his bunk, about the manure smeared in and on his boots, about pails of garbage suspended above doors. He told about the numerous times Gebhardt had laid a hidden wire in his path, pulled it taut just in time for him to fall over it, and then taken it up and disappeared into the dark, laughing. He related every dirty trick in the sergeant’s malicious imagination, including firing a blank cartridge right behind Arnheiter while he was using a soldering iron, thus causing him to burn his right hand with the molten solder. He ended with the day he had found pages of his sketchbook torn to pieces and scattered all over the camp. “I don’t know how he got it, sir. But the first page in the sketchbook was a drawing I made before I left home. It was of my house, sir, and my _Oma_ , and I found it ground into the earth in the stableyard.” He had stopped looking ashamed; now his fists as well as his jaw were clenched with helpless fury.

          Dietrich listened, appalled. Once Arnheiter had begun to talk, it was like knocking down a dike. “Why? Why was he doing these things?”

          “Because it amused him,” the blond young man said bitterly. “To him it was a game, a kind of entertainment. It gave him pleasure to humiliate me, or make me hurt myself, or look foolish. _Mein Herr_ ,” he added hastily, suddenly realizing that he had been talking nonstop for a good quarter hour as if he were speaking to an equal, and not to his commanding officer.

          _“Machen Sie keine Sorgen,”_ the captain replied, brushing off the private’s worry about being disrespectful.  _No,_ he thought, _it is not like pulling down a dike—more like lancing a festering wound to let the poison out._ “You said he struck you so harshly on the last day you were there. What happened?”

          Arnheiter took a deep breath and let it out again. “ _Mein Herr_ , I refused to lick his boots. Gebhardt tried to make me, and I would not.”

          Dietrich heard that, but it took him a moment to realize that Arnheiter was not speaking figuratively. “He wanted you to actually…”

          “Lick his filthy boots,” said the radioman. “Yes, sir. With my mouth. After he had been in the stable yard.”

          _Gott im Himmel…_ “What did you do?”

          “I told him I would not. I am a man and a soldier. I am not a dog, and I will not do that.”

          _Ah. Arnheiter stood up to him at last and this sergeant was enraged._ “And then?”

          “Then he hit me, here.” He indicated a spot on his midsection. “Each time I said ‘ _Nein, ich tue das nicht,’_ he hit me again.  After enough times, I was sick.”

          “Naturally.”

          “ _Mein Herr_ , I don’t know what happened next, except that Gebhardt struck me, or kicked me, in the face.  When I came back to myself, I was on the ground, alone. He and his cronies were gone. You saw, sir, how they left me.” Dietrich nodded, and Arnheiter continued his story. “In those days, I was sleeping in the headquarters office; I had bribed the sentry by drawing a portrait of his sweetheart, so he would let me come back to the office after lights out. I went there and slept. After some hours, someone woke me, and it was Hauptmann Becker.  When he saw me, he swore most strongly and made several phone calls. Then he wrote the papers and went with me to watch while I packed my kit.”

          _I know there are men whose minds are twisted in this way. And I am not by nature a violent man,_ thought Dietrich to himself. _But if I ever have the opportunity to encounter this Gebhardt, I will personally make him wish he were never born._ He couldn’t actually do so, of course, as thrashing a sergeant with his bare hands would be a court-martial offense, but there was no doubt the man deserved it at someone’s hands, even if not his. “To behave in that way is a kind of sickness, a disease of the mind. Such a thing ought never to have happened,” he said quietly.  For the moment, he could not think of anything useful to say, anything to tell this young fellow who had been subjected to such vile treatment.  Dietrich reached into his pocket for his own tin of cigarettes and silently offered Arnheiter one, and took one himself.  He lit both of them.

          The blond young man looked both surprised and pleased at being offered a smoke by his CO, and accepted it, inclining his head in thanks. “ _Mein Onkel sagt immer, das Leben ist kein Ponyhof_.” He shrugged; life was rough in general, and there wasn’t much anyone could do about it.

          Dietrich arched an eyebrow. _Indeed, life is no pony farm_. “I give you my word as an officer—nothing of that kind will ever happen in any unit I command.” He paused a few moments to let the other man consider that. “Can you put this thing behind you and carry on?”

          “ _Hier_?” Arnheiter said, gesturing with his good hand toward the cloudless blue sky and the blazing sun now in the southwest. “ _Ja_ , _mein Herr_. This is like a different world completely.”

          “Very well. I want you to tell me one more thing— why are you afraid of Oberleutnant Bergmann?”

          The clerk shook his head. “I am not, _mein Herr_.  Only… Gebhardt is from Heidelberg, and so is _der Oberleutnant._ He has the same accent, and he is always shouting.”

          _Ah, that explains it._ “Keep this to yourself, Arnheiter, but I will tell you something important.” Dietrich arched an eyebrow. “Bergmann always shouts. He shouts at everyone except the officers. It is his natural inclination; it is as much his nature to shout at the men as it is for…” He searched for a useful analogy, and went on, “…as it is for squirrels to climb trees.” He allowed himself a smile, and the clerk chuckled quietly. “Bergmann is loud, rude, uncouth, and ill-mannered. He has the table manners of a Visigoth and if supplies allow it, he will eat more than you and I would together. And in spite of that, Emil Bergmann is one of the best officers I have ever had. Do you understand? He is nothing like this sergeant you had, even if his accent is the same.”

          “Yes, sir. I know that.”

          “Good. Now,” he said, approaching another difficult subject, “except for your friend Genscher, Bergmann and I are the only ones who know about your work with the map. I allowed the other officers to think that the copy you made already existed, not that you made the copy that very night, from memory. You ought to receive a commendation for that work, but… if Berlin were to hear of your talents of that kind, they may very well send for you, to go back there to work in intelligence.”

          The private now regarded him with an expression of alarm, if not horror. “Please, _mein Herr_ …” he stammered, shaking his head, not sure what the proper protocol was for begging the captain not to do something. “ _Bitte_ …”

          Dietrich raised a hand to forestall him. “I do not intend to inform them. I think it is not in your best interest, nor in mine. I need you here.” He paused. “But if you wish to have the commendation, then it is possible that may result.”

          “No, _mein Herr,_ I do not. I need no commendation for doing my duty.” Arnheiter shook his head, his blue eyes steady. “ _Ich wünsche nur—_ ” he began, and then stopped. _Du Idiot,_ he chided himself. _He didn’t ask what you wished for…_

          The officer looked back at him, curious. “What is it that you wish?”

          Friedrich Arnheiter swallowed hard under that intense scrutiny, but he answered truthfully. “I wish nothing further, _Herr Hauptmann_ , but to remain here in the desert, and to follow you.”[2]

          What was there to say? The only thing one could do with that gift was simply to accept it.  “Thank you, Corporal,” he said quietly. “Come, we have much to do.”

<<<<<>>>>> 

_Liebe Onkel Helmut und Tante Trudi, und die liebste Oma,_

_I hope this letter finds you well and that everything is all right at home. I hope you were not worried that I couldn’t answer your letter right away, but I was in the battalion hospital for a week or so. We had a good deal of action lately, and I got wounded in the right arm.  Don’t worry; it isn’t extremely serious and the battalion doctor says it should heal all right. The nurses were very kind to us in there, and one day they even acquired a number of lemons from the local Arabs, and made Zitronen-Limonade for all of us men._

_Herr Hauptmann said to me that I will be made corporal now, and company clerk. And he intends to have me commended for bravery under fire. But I was not really brave, you know—I just did the only thing I could think of. He is very clever, like our good General. The Allies have a group of commandos who tried to bait us into an ambush, but Hauptmann Dietrich found another way to reach our objective so we were not caught._

_I came back yesterday from the hospital and my friends Konrad, and Rudi Hartmann and Wolf Bauer made a little party for me and we played cards like we often do. They are good friends and comrades. What they told me last month is true— I am a very lucky fellow to be here._

_I don’t have any photos to send you this time, but I will send you some in the next letter._

_Mit große Liebe, eurer Fritz_

          Arnheiter ended the letter with a quick sketch of the sun setting over the ridge;  he was about to put it into the envelope when an idea came to him.  With a smile, he added something to his drawing—when he finished, there was a small tawny-red fox sitting on a rock watching the sunset. _Now I am one of the desert foxes, too..._

          By the time he prepared the letter to go out in the mail, it was after nine o’clock and almost time for lights out. He was struggling to get out of his shirt, until Konrad came over to help him undress. “I’m sorry,” he apologized to his tentmate. “I can’t quite—”

          “It is nothing. I am only happy you are here, my friend, and not killed,” said the dark-haired Bavarian, for once completely serious and without levity.

          “ _Danke sehr_. Did I tell you, I did not know I was shot until Herr Hauptmann shook me to make me stop the _Kübel_? I don’t understand that.”

          “I have heard that before,” Genscher said. “That in the moment of hard fighting, a man can be wounded and not even know it. It’s very strange.” He eyed his friend closely. “Is the pain bad? Do you need me to get any medicine for you? I think the medic is still in the infirmary tent.”

          “No. I have some here he gave me.” Arnheiter paused, reflecting on what Dietrich had said to him earlier. _Can you put this thing behind you? the captain asked. Ja, I think I can. I trust Konrad, and my friends. No one is going to do those things to me here…_ He looked back at Konrad and made a decision. “But there is something else I need help for. I can’t do it with just one hand,” he explained as he got up and went to the tent entrance.

          His tentmate smiled. “ _Ausgezeichnet…_ ” Together they untied the cluster of tin cans and Konrad carried them outside to be disposed of. A few minutes later, the bugle sounded for lights out as both of them turned in for the night. “Sleep well, my friend,” said Genscher.

          “ _Danke_. _Und du auch_.”

* * *

[1] Operation Crusader.

[2] This goes better in German, frankly… “ _Ich wünsche mir nichts mehr, Herr Hauptmann, als hier in der Wüste zu bleiben, und Ihnen zu folgen.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I am not sure how this story ended up four times its original length! But when I looked over the original “Pass of Thermopylae Raid” with an eye to revising it, I was really unhappy with it. Of all the RP stories I’ve written, it was always the one I was least satisfied with. Not only was it my first RP story, so I didn’t know the characters all that well, but it was also extremely shallow. Essentially, the plotline was very simple: “Troy has a great idea for an ambush; Dietrich falls for it; the Rats win; end of story.” On a third look last year (I had revised it slightly for my Rats and Foxes reprint anthology), I decided what it really needed was not another revision, but a COMPLETE rewrite, and I ended up flipping the POV so that it’s more of a Dietrich story with much of the action taking place in his company. I took out the references to Pearl Harbor, set the story in October 1941 instead of December, and decided to make the point that Dietrich is very much cleverer than Troy thinks he is; it’s early days yet, very early in first season. They’re still sizing each other up.  
> The other major change to “Thermopylae” involves the roles of original characters. In the original version, Friedrich Arnheiter was a walk-on character, a bit part, used just to demonstrate through their interactions that Hauptmann Dietrich is a decent person (for the non-RP-fan audience of a multi-fandom zine). He wasn’t actually intended to be a continuing character. Later, when he surprised me and became a permanent member of Dietrich's company after all, I had to try to make him fit the way he was presented in “Thermopylae.” So there’s always been kind of a continuity disconnect going on there. I’ve re-developed Arnheiter somewhat, but he’s still essentially the same person—the shy, nervous artistic youth who will gladly follow Dietrich to the ends of the earth: he IS the Undying Loyalty trope. But I had never established in a story how that rapport came about, or why they are as tightly-knit as they are. In the rewrite, I tried to do that, and much to my surprise, he ended up being the eyes through which we see a lot of the action; also, this time around, he helps move the plot instead of just being the hapless guy on duty when Troy escapes. I also had to develop sound reasons for him to have recurring anxiety issues. There are several other original characters here as well; as I continued writing Rat Patrol stories, I got a great deal of enjoyment out of “peopling Dietrich’s world”, as another writer said, and creating some of the men in his command who will reappear from time to time in other stories of mine. Sergeant Kunzler appears here courtesy of his creator, Kat Parsons, who has kindly lent him to me.


End file.
